It’s absolutely a media offensive. These attacks aren’t able to do systemic damage, their reap purpose is to produce impressive looking videos and pictures that can be used to convince the public that the war is going great. This was perfectly timed for the G7 summit so all the imbeciles attending it could pat one another on the back and justify committing more resources to the war.

What you have to look at are the actual numbers, and this kind of gives the game away. Turns out that Russian energy exports are at record high levels. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/russia-s-oil-exports-near-record-pace-as-ukraine-s-drones-target-its-refineries

It’s also worth noting that refineries are huge, and a few drones simply can’t do enough structural damage to take them out of operation for any significant amount of time. Usually, things are back to working within a few days which is how long it takes to repair after these pinprick attacks. But if a drone manages to hit a fuel storage tank you get a nice big explosion with a lot of black smoke, and then you can plaster it all over the media saying how Russian energy industry is on its knees.

Another obvious thing is that Russia is hitting Ukraine with far larger drone and missile attacks on weekly basis. So, if Ukraine is still fighting, it shows that these sorts of attacks can’t really change the course of the war. This is the same thing the US discovered in Iran incidentally.

The real concern here is that these attacks are creating a lot of public anger in Russia, and people are increasingly wondering why Putin is fighting with kid gloves on, and why the west is allowed to hit Moscow while Russia doesn’t retaliate. Everybody understands that the war is between NATO and Russia with Ukraine being a western proxy. These drones are produced in the west, they’re guided by western satellites, and the west provides all the logistics. In other words, Western countries are direct participants in the conflict.

And it’s going to be harder and harder to defend having a policy of not retaliating especially given that elections are coming up. There is a growing hard line faction in Russia that wants to retaliate directly against the west. Karaganov has been openly advocating for using limited nuclear strikes against Europe, and while he was in a minority before, his position is starting to be seen as rational. The argument is that Russia needs to reestablish nuclear deterrence and to remind the west that it is a nuclear power, and is willing to use their nuclear deterrent if pushed too far. This is by far the most concerning outcome of all this.