What is Ukraine’s 40-day campaign against Russia and has it worked?
On 26 June, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced that he was ordering Ukraine’s state security service to launch a 40-day campaign against Russian targets aimed at “influencing the...
On 26 June, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced that he was ordering Ukraine’s state security service to launch a 40-day campaign against Russian targets aimed at “influencing the aggressor state in order to compel it to end to the war”.
Since then, Kyiv has sharply escalated attacks on Russia under the aegis of a series of overlapping operations striking key supply lines in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories, including Crimea, and striking Moscow and St Petersburg in a series of high-profile long-range missile attacks, triggering a fuel crisis.
Three weeks in to the 40-day campaign, as it becomes clearer what it involves, how successful has it been and what does the operation say about the future course of the war?
Why did Zelenskyy talk about a 40-day campaign?
Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House thinktank – like others – sees Zelenskyy’s 40-day framing as an Orthodox Christian reference aimed at Russia and Vladimir Putin in particular.
“Zelenskyy is the master of narrative performance,” she says. “I think it is a reference to the 40 days in purgatory waiting for the decision to go to hell or heaven. The message is that we already think of you as dead. Now it is your decision whether to save yourselves or not.”
Beyond the metaphysical, Lutsevych sees the length of the campaign as having a political significance as well. “Elections for the Duma [Russian parliament] are in September. Part of the idea is to make Putin understand that it hurts his hold on power by doing everything to bring the war to Moscow and St Petersburg in particular.”
Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, adds: “It is a psychological campaign. I don’t think there is an expectation that the 40-day campaign will force Russia to surrender. It is a way of saying: ‘We can take the war to you’.
“I think the big thing is the effort to precipitate an oil crisis in Russia. I think what Zelenskyy is also trying to do is to focus Ukrainians on what Ukraine is doing on the battlefield where the conversation has been about a quagmire, saying, ‘we are being dynamic and taking the initiative’.”
What does the campaign involve?
While Zelenskyy was not initially explicit, subsequent comments by Ukrainian officials have made clear that it is seen as encompassing aspects of several ongoing efforts, including the so-called middle strike strategy that has heavily disrupted Russia’s main supply lines and the long-range strike campaign against Russian military industrial sites, refineries, shipping and major cities.
The retired Australian general Mick Ryan, writing in his Futura Doctrina Substack, describes it primarily as an “influence operation” intended to force Russia to end its invasion.
“This is a unified campaign of deep strikes against oil refineries, military facilities and major cities intended to press Moscow toward ending the war,” he wrote.
Ryan described the attacks on oil refineries as an “attempted strategic coercion by attrition” of Russia’s war economy, adding: “By 5 July, Ukraine’s general staff claimed to have disabled 42.74% of Russia’s oil refining capacity, reporting eight refineries hit in a month, more than 60 storage tanks destroyed or damaged and cumulative industry losses of $13.5bn.”
In one recent week, operations officially attributed to the 40-day campaign included 13 long-range and medium-range strikes on key military targets including the Saki and Gvardeyskoye airfields, aircraft hangars in Crimea, the St Petersburg oil terminal, the Yaroslavl oil refinery north-east of Moscow, a refinery in Kaluga region to the capital’s south-west, and the oil loading terminal at the Vysotsk seaport on the Baltic.
What has the impact been so far?
Ukraine has been launching long-range strikes on Moscow for a while now, but its stepping up of their scale and intensity has shocked Muscovites who had never expected the war to be brought home to them so forcefully. Towering columns of smoke from burning refineries, the new experience of large flights of drones flying over the capital and St Petersburg – Russia’s two most important cities – have triggered the posting of shocked videos on social media.
In practical terms, Russians are now facing long queues at many petrol stations with some sleeping in cars for several days. Less visibly documented is the impact on Russian-occupied Crimea, where strikes on key bridges and roads to the peninsular have led to power cuts and a sense of it being under siege.
It may also be generating political frictions inside Russia, according to the Institute for the Study of War. “Ukraine’s successful intermediate- and long-range strike campaigns have forced a reckoning within the Russian ultranationalist information space,” it said in a recent report. “[It is] causing commentators to blame the Russian federal government for failing to create a cohesive air defence system that can adequately protect private businesses and critical infrastructure.”
Does this help Ukraine on the international stage?
Lutsevych suggests Ukraine’s successes in bringing the war to Russia – before and within the 40-day campaign – may have contributed to a change of attitude in the Trump administration towards Ukraine.
The notorious low point was the February 2025 Oval Office scolding of Zelenskyy by the US president, Donald Trump, who told him “you don’t have the cards”, while the US vice-president, JD Vance, accused him of “disrespect”.
A very different dynamic was in evidence during last week’s Nato summit in Ankara where Trump suggested Kyiv could be allowed to produce Patriot missile interceptors under licence. “That was the biggest visible success of Ankara. It is psychologically important because before it would have seemed unbelievable that the US would give Ukraine the licence for such a sophisticated weapons system,” Lutsevych said.
“I think it shows it is done for Russia in its attempt to conquer Ukraine and is important for the strategic posture of Ukraine’s forces in the future, although it is more symbolic at the moment.”
Where does it go from here?
There has been public and private speculation that the campaign may see other high-profile military efforts aimed at humiliating Putin and undermining his support, including against units regarded as key to sustaining Putin’s regime.
One possibility that has been floated by Denys Shtilerman, the chief designer and co-founder of Ukraine’s missile producer Fire Point, is strikes on key military facilities in Moscow with newly produced ballistic missiles perhaps beginning in September.
“First is Moscow … where the military facilities are protected. The most important thing is that I am practically 100% certain they won’t be able to intercept effectively,” said Shtilerman in an interview this month.
There is also speculation that Ukraine may once again attempt to retake territory from Russia after assessments that depleted Russian forces are increasingly thinly spread in almost half of the areas where they were once attempting to advance.
And despite the public framing of the campaign as lasting 40 days, Lutsevych believes the campaign, as Shtilerman suggests, is likely to not only continue but perhaps intensify further.
