The New Geography of War: How Ukraine Is Redefining Strategic Depth

Throughout history, geography has been one of the defining elements of military power. Mountains, seas, deserts, and territorial depth have shaped not only political borders but also the movement of armies, supply routes, and states’ defensive capabilities. Vast territory has traditionally served as a strategic asset, forcing invading armies to extend their logistical lines, disperse their forces, and incur mounting costs before reaching vital political and economic centres.

Within this strategic logic, particular importance was attached to the strategic rear (deep rear)—areas located far from the front lines where states could concentrate industrial production, energy infrastructure, and military capabilities under the assumption that they were beyond the enemy’s immediate reach. For centuries, distance itself constituted one of the strongest defensive advantages. An invading force had to advance step by step towards its objective, with every kilometre increasing the material and human costs of war.

Modern warfare, however, is fundamentally altering this strategic calculus. The rapid proliferation of long-range precision weapons, strike drones, and coordinated mass attacks has significantly reduced the protective value of geographical distance. Being hundreds—or even thousands—of kilometres from the front line no longer guarantees security. Strategic depth remains an important military asset, but it is steadily losing one of its most significant historical advantages: its ability to provide relative security simply through distance.

The current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War offers perhaps the clearest illustration of this transformation. Despite lacking Russia’s comparable manpower, industrial base, and conventional military capabilities, Ukraine is using long-range unmanned systems to redefine the logic of asymmetric warfare, substantially diminishing the defensive value of Russia’s strategic depth.

An Oil Exporter Forced to Import Petrol

One of the world’s largest oil producers, Russia, has been forced to import petrol from India. Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have disrupted domestic refining capacity, creating fuel shortages that have led to supply restrictions, rising prices, and distribution disruptions across several regions. Russia has already imported approximately 60,000 tonnes of petrol from India, while Moscow is reportedly seeking to secure imports of up to 400,000 tonnes per month from foreign suppliers.

At the same time, according to estimates by the Argus pricing agency, the discount on Russia’s benchmark Urals crude delivered through western ports had reached US$27 per barrel by early July. The result is a striking paradox: Russia is selling crude oil to Indian refineries at steep discounts while importing refined petrol from India to alleviate fuel shortages at home.

A principal driver of this situation has been Ukraine’s sustained campaign against Russia’s oil-refining infrastructure. In recent months, Ukrainian long-range strike drones have targeted refineries, oil terminals, fuel storage facilities, pumping stations, and logistics hubs. The geography of these strikes has also expanded steadily, moving beyond border regions and increasingly reaching targets deep inside Russian territory.

The early July strike on the Omsk Oil Refinery – Russia’s largest refinery – was among the deepest attacks carried out during the war. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, Ukrainian forces struck 11 oil refineries and eight defence-industrial facilities in June alone. Reuters reported that the longest confirmed strike exceeded 2,700 kilometres, underscoring the unprecedented operational reach of Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign.

Russia’s fuel shortages, therefore, should not be viewed merely as an economic or energy-sector challenge. They are among the clearest manifestations of a broader strategic transformation unfolding in the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War: the erosion of the traditional defensive value of strategic depth.

Strategic Depth as a Defensive Resource

Few states have relied on territorial depth as heavily as Russia throughout their strategic history. In his book Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger describes the fundamental paradox of Russia’s security thinking: the Muscovite state, expanding steadily towards Central Europe, the Pacific, and Central Asia, sought security through territorial expansion. Yet, as Kissinger argues, this search gradually became “expansion for the sake of expansion.” Each new territorial acquisition pushed potential adversaries farther from Russia’s political and economic centres while simultaneously creating new borders and new vulnerabilities. In Kissinger’s view, few states have initiated as many wars or generated as much instability in pursuit of absolute security as Russia.

Underlying this strategic mindset, however, was a simple geographical calculation: the greater the distance separating an adversary from the country’s political and economic centres, the more difficult it became to reach them. Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and Nazi Germany’s invasion in 1941 remain defining episodes in Russia’s strategic memory. In both cases, geographic depth forced invading armies to extend their lines of communication, disperse their forces, and wage war across distances far greater than originally anticipated. Space bought Russia time to regroup, mobilise reserves, and gradually shift the material and human costs of war onto the invading force.

The evolution of long-range strike systems and unmanned aerial technologies, however, is fundamentally altering this strategic calculus by significantly reducing the defensive advantages traditionally associated with the strategic rear. Ukraine’s employment of a new generation of long-range unmanned systems in the Russo-Ukrainian War represents one of the clearest manifestations of this transformation. These systems do not eliminate the strategic importance of geographic or territorial depth, but they substantially diminish the role of distance as a stand-alone defensive asset.

In the past, an oil refinery located 500, 1,000, or even 2,000 kilometres from the front line could be considered relatively secure simply because of its geographic location. Destroying such a target required strategic aviation, expensive long-range missiles, or a large-scale ground offensive. The rapid evolution of unmanned technologies has dramatically lowered that threshold, enabling states with far more limited resources to strike strategically significant targets deep inside an adversary’s territory. Yet the transformation brought about by these systems extends well beyond their range alone.

Air Defence Saturation and the New Economics of Defence

The Russo-Ukrainian War has exposed another fundamental limitation of modern air defence systems: their vulnerability to saturation by mass drone attacks. The simultaneous employment of dozens—or even hundreds—of unmanned aerial systems can overwhelm radar networks and command-and-control structures, forcing defenders to engage a large number of aerial threats within a limited timeframe.

Under these conditions, the attacker’s objective is not for every drone to reach its target. The strategy behind mass drone attacks inherently assumes that some systems will be intercepted. If even a small proportion of the attacking drones penetrate the air defence network and strike energy infrastructure, military airfields, or oil refineries, the operation can still be considered strategically successful.

This gives rise to one of the central paradoxes of modern warfare. Neutralising 80–90 per cent of incoming drones represents an impressive tactical achievement. Yet if the few drones that evade interception succeed in disabling critical infrastructure, tactical success can nevertheless translate into strategic failure.

For geographically large states, this challenge is amplified. It is virtually impossible to defend the front line and thousands of kilometres of dispersed logistics and energy infrastructure with the same density and effectiveness. Although greater distances increase drone flight times, they no longer prevent attacks. At the same time, constructing an impenetrable defensive shield across vast territories is prohibitively expensive and, in practice, largely unfeasible. Under these conditions, success depends less on the mere possession of advanced technologies than on the strategy governing their employment.

Ukraine Is Not Trying to Become a Smaller Russia

Lacking Russia’s comparable manpower, industrial capacity, and conventional military capabilities, Ukraine could not build its long-term war strategy around direct competition in resources. A symmetrical confrontation would force Kyiv to fight on terrain where Moscow enjoys clear numerical and material advantages. Instead, Ukraine is reshaping the character of the conflict by using emerging technologies to turn Russia’s traditional strengths into strategic vulnerabilities.

It is in this context that Ukraine’s sustained targeting of energy, military, and logistical infrastructure deep inside Russia’s strategic rear should be understood. The expanding reach of Ukraine’s long-range drones has placed Moscow before a persistent strategic dilemma, compelling it to disperse its limited air defence assets across an immense territory. In doing so, Ukraine retains the initiative, preserving its ability to determine both the timing and the location of future strikes.

The establishment of a dedicated Long-Range Strike Forces Command further underscores Kyiv’s commitment to institutionalising this approach as an independent component of modern warfare. The systematic targeting of economic and logistical infrastructure is intended not merely to inflict physical damage, but to substantially increase the economic and defensive costs of sustaining Russia’s war effort.

Ukraine’s strategic innovation therefore lies not simply in the adoption of new technologies, but in their systematic employment to transform Russia’s territorial depth from a defensive advantage into an economic and military liability.

The New Strategic Value of the Strategic Rear

It is still too early to draw definitive military doctrines from the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine’s long-range strikes have neither eliminated Russia’s overall military advantage, nor crippled its energy system, nor determined the outcome of the conflict. Moscow continues to possess vastly superior manpower and industrial capacity, while retaining substantial capabilities to launch devastating attacks against Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. Yet the defensive value of these advantages is no longer what it once was.

Geographic depth remains an important strategic resource. It continues to provide opportunities to gain time, disperse industrial production, and position strategic reserves. It no longer constitutes, however, an unequivocal defensive advantage. The larger a state’s territory, the greater the geographical expanse of critical infrastructure that must be protected. In an era of long-range, relatively inexpensive, and mass-deployable strike systems, territorial depth increasingly becomes a defensive burden rather than a defensive asset.

Ukraine is among the first states to have systematically transformed this reality into a deliberate strategy of asymmetric warfare.

Russia’s current fuel shortages provide one of the clearest illustrations of this transformation. At first glance, the fact that one of the world’s largest oil producers has been compelled to import petrol to alleviate domestic shortages may appear to be little more than an energy-sector problem. In reality, however, it reflects a far more profound strategic development: the declining value of distance as a source of security.

If this trend continues, one of the principal lessons of the war will be that the strategic rear can no longer guarantee security simply by virtue of distance. The era in which geography alone could provide sanctuary has come to an end.

Author: Elen Hokhikyan

This version of the article was translated from the original Armenian with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and has been reviewed for accuracy