If you are like me this morning, and sick of hearing about the US President’s single-handed “victory” in Iran (aka the WORST foreign policy debacle in America’s 250-year history), you’ll be pleased to return to Ukraine and review a bit of military theory regarding that war.

I have talked about this issue before, but there has been a change that prompts me to return. The change has been one of momentum. In team sports, there is an almost imperceptible factor in a team’s performance. That is momentum. In individual sports, we refer to it sometimes as “being in the zone” and in both cases it is something that is perceived almost subliminally. In military operations, momentum is a critical aspect at all three levels. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery famously told his subordinate commanders, “Never check momentum and never revert to mere pushing.”

So what has happened in Ukraine? Retired US general Ben Hodges said recently that Ukraine has finally found it’s “theory of victory”. I would quibble with Gen Hodges, but I respect him too much to fuss about his use of “theory” because his argument is spot on: Ukraine has decided to strike incessantly at Russia’s critical vulnerability. Interestingly, this vulnerability is the same at all three levels of war: strategic; operational and tactical. The synchronicity is both rare and quite a condemnation of Russian military thinking. That vulnerability is resources.

At the tactical level, Russia cannot replace either the manpower, or the ordnance that Ukrainian drones are attriting. At the operational level, Russia does not have the capacity or the capability to ward off the attacks that are now brining the war to Russia’s doorstep. At the strategic level, Russia is at a loss to staunch the bleeding of the economic inputs that feed the war as Ukraine methodically destroys oil reserves, pipelines, and refineries — all legitimate military targets, in contrast to hitting schools, apartments and railway stations like the Russians. And this brings us to something I have mentioned before but which most civilian observers do not fully appreciate.

In classic military theory, war is fought not only at three levels but also on two planes. These are the physical and the moral. The deep strikes that Ukraine has been accomplishing have struck at the heart of Russia on the moral plane. Russia, like the Nazis in 1943, cannot maintain the façade that the homeland and the capital city are invulnerable. Even hardline Putin supporters cannot deny the video images of an erupting oil refinery sending a multi-ton steel cover hundreds of feet into the air at the Gazprom Neft Oil Refinery in the Kapotnya district, June 18, 2026, a mere 15 kilometers from the Kremlin.

What does all of this mean? In a conventional war, this reversal of momentum from Russia to Ukraine would be an indication that Russia had reached its “culminating point”, a Clausewitzian construct, which describes the critical juncture at which a force loses its capacity to sustain offensive operations, and which typically marks the transition from offensive advantage to defensive vulnerability. This point can also be seen at all three levels, where at the lower levels (tactical and operational) we consider this the culminating point of attack but at the higher level (strategic) we distinguish it as the culminating point of victory.

Clearly, Ukrainian mastery of the tactical battlespace by its innovative use of drones, which have made drones tactically effective — although I hasten to remind everyone of my insistence that drone usage has been strategically indecisive. We must be careful not to conflate the weapon system with its usage. If we wish to elevate our thinking, then consider that the Ukrainian theory of victory, to use Gen Hodges’ term, has moved to operationalize its airpower to achieve a strategic objective, which is the classic definition of Operational Art. (Something the Russians claim to have invented but have been unable to exhibit since 1945.)

What are we to make of this shift in momentum? Is Ukraine now to move over to the offensive, knowing that although the defensive is the stronger form of war but the less decisive? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Ukrainian strategic patience is called for.