Vladimir Putin has his back against the wall. He is losing the economic war faster than he is gaining any military advantage in Ukraine.

Russia’s much-feared offensive sputtered out over the Northern hemisphere summer with 800 casualties a day and little to show for it. The Kremlin failed to break Ukraine’s fortress belt or turn the tide of the war.

“Russians are still harassing us and hunting civilians with drones, which is a horrible practice, but they are not achieving any strategic goal,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defence minister.

Vladimir Putin would be pleased with the result of his latest drone attacks.Credit: AP

Meanwhile, the Russian home front is cracking – much as the German home front cracked from war exhaustion after the Kaiser threw everything into his failed spring offensive in 1918.

Ukrainian drone strikes are doing so much damage to Russian oil infrastructure and refineries that the country is having to import emergency fuel supplies from China, Korea and Belarus.

The Moscow agency Neftegaz says 38 per cent of the country’s primary refining capacity is out of action, though Russia has ways to plug holes.

The clock is ticking for Putin and that, precisely, is the imminent danger facing Europe.

The latest attack this week hit the Antipinsky oil refinery in western Siberia, 2000 kilometres into Russian territory. It was the deepest strike of the war so far.

“They have huge areas they can’t defend with air-defence systems. Russia cannot do anything substantial to protect those assets,” said Zagorodnyuk.

“It has amazed a lot of people because they didn’t think Ukraine could reach so far. We clearly see the effects of deep strike technology,” he told the Royal United Services Institute this week.

Zagorodnyuk said the old warfare is essentially dead. Much of Russia’s enormous military hardware is useless. The war has become a high-tech race, and Ukraine is a step ahead.

The Wall Street Journal says the

© Brisbane Times