By Dan Peleschuk
KYIV, May 5 (Reuters) - Ukrainian troops are rapidly increasing medium-range drone strikes on Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday, demonstrating a growing capability for Kyiv's outmanned military as it fights Moscow in the fifth year of the war.
As Kyiv confronts renewed Russian offensives along the eastern front, it is increasingly relying on so‑called "middle strikes" to hit logistics hubs, troop concentrations and air-defence systems dozens of kilometres
behind the front line.
Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that strikes at ranges of more than 20 km have doubled compared to March and quadrupled since February.
"And there will be even more," he wrote on X. "This is a priority area."
Ukraine is embracing medium-range strikes - which target assets beyond the reach of first-person-view drones - as it develops its homegrown defence sector and seeks to wean itself off reliance on Western aid.
LOGISTICS, AMMUNITION DEPOTS AND COMMAND POSTS
Kyiv's Defence Ministry said last week that Ukrainian forces had conducted more than 160 middle strikes throughout April at a range of 120-150 km.
Targets included more than 65 logistics and ammunition depots, 33 drone control points and workshops, as well as 17 troop command posts in both occupied Ukraine and Russian border regions.
"We are hitting resources, disrupting supplies (and) reducing the intensity of shelling and the mobility of troops," it said in a May 1 statement.
"The April strikes are a systemic campaign to exhaust Russia."
The stepped‑up effort comes as Russian forces increase pressure on key, heavily fortified cities in the east in a bid to capture the rest of Ukraine's war-torn Donetsk region.
PAVING THE WAY FOR LONG-RANGE STRIKES
Outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield, Ukraine has also intensified attacks on energy and military-industrial sites deep inside Russia to weaken the Kremlin's war machine.
Ukrainian forces in recent weeks carried out multiple strikes on a seaport and refinery in Russia's southwestern Tuapse, sending up clouds of black smoke and oil spilling into the Black Sea.
On Tuesday, Zelenskiy said Ukraine hit Russian military-industrial sites including defence manufacturing facilities in the city of Cheboksary, some 1,500 km away, using its domestically developed Flamingo cruise missiles.
Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine's drone forces, said his units had struck 25 air-defence and 13 radar and electronic warfare systems in April to help pave the way for Kyiv's long-range campaign.
"The consistent and regular destruction of air-defence systems at the operational level opens corridors for ramping up deep strikes on military-industrial and energy-sector facilities," he said on Sunday.
(Additional reporting by Anna Pruchnicka and Olena Harmash; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Ros Russell)
