Ukraine’s drone war on Russia could backfire

Vladimir Putin has sold his Ukrainian war to the Russian people by trying to find the sweet spot between existential threat and reassuring distance: the Russian president portrays the conflict as a struggle to preserve the nation from a hostile West and its Ukrainian proxy, but one fought safely outside its borders. Increasingly, Kyiv seems to want to bring the war to Russia, though, in a gamble which could go either way.

A drone identified as a Ukrainian-made Ukrjet UJ-22 Airborne, capable of carrying up to 20kg of explosives, crashed close to a gas distribution station 60 miles southeast of Moscow yesterday. This is more than 300 miles from the closest Ukrainian territory – and too close to comfort for Putin. A UJ-22 has a range of almost 500 miles but can only be directly controlled within 100 miles, so it was presumably operating on a pre-programmed route, when it clipped some trees and crashed.