Ukraine reports mass drone strikes on Russian supply lines

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) says its Alfa special operations unit is running what the agency calls a unique operation to isolate an entire stretch of front-line territory, using a category of strike drones it calls “middle-strike” to cut Russian supply routes.

Over the past month, SBU special operations fighters destroyed or damaged nearly 2,400 Russian vehicles, including trucks, command-and-staff vehicles and other specialized equipment, the agency said.

The SBU said Alfa’s drone operators are targeting oil infrastructure and Russia’s “shadow fleet” of sanctioned tankers, alongside a sustained campaign against occupation forces’ transport at the line of contact and in the rear. The goal, the agency said, is to cut off Russian units from fuel, ammunition and personnel.

Alfa, formally the Center for Special Operations “A” of the Security Service of Ukraine, has operated on the battlefield since 2014 and expanded its role after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The unit was among the first in Ukraine to field fiber-optic FPV drones at scale in 2025, a technology that resists Russian jamming. As of June 2025, Alfa said its operators had struck more than 15,200 enemy firing positions, command posts and fortifications, destroyed or damaged 2,253 drones and knocked out 677 electronic warfare and reconnaissance systems. Around the same time, the unit said roughly one in eight Russian tanks destroyed by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield had been credited to Alfa.

“Middle-strike” describes drone attacks at ranges beyond immediate front-line FPV engagements but short of the deep strikes Alfa carries out against targets deep inside Russia. In July, the unit struck the Dzhankoy airbase and logistics hubs in occupied Crimea, an operation Ukrainian outlet ArmyInform described as taking place in the “middle-strike zone.”

For deep strikes, Alfa operators fly domestically built drones including the Lyutyi, Bober, Palianytsia, Morok and Ukrjet26, Alfa serviceman and former professional tennis player Serhiy Stakhovsky said in a June interview with Ukrinform. Stakhovsky said the unit’s long-range strikes on Russian territory rely entirely on Ukrainian-made drones. Alfa has also fielded its own purpose-built platform, MICH 2000, built from a Chinese civilian airframe and capable of flying up to 2,000 km while carrying up to 60 kg of explosives, The Defence Blog previously reported. One of the unit’s notable strikes came in September 2024, when Alfa hit an ammunition depot in Toropets, Russia, that stored rockets for Grad and Iskander systems; the depot continued detonating for two weeks afterward.

The latest tally builds on a pattern the SBU has publicized for months. In late May, the agency reported that Alfa’s FPV drone operators had hit more than 500 enemy vehicles in a single week, targeting supply columns before they could reach front-line positions.

The reported vehicle count also comes days after a broader Ukrainian strike on Novorossiysk, Russia, on Aug. 12, when President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces coordinated Palianytsia, Peklo, Bars and Dovhyi Neptun missiles with MICH, Fire Point and other drone systems in a single operation against the city’s naval base, port facilities and an oil export terminal.