History, as I have often noted here, does not repeat itself. It merely mocks those who fail to learn its lessons. This week’s Ukrainian drone strikes, powered by British-supplied weapons, have sent a tremor through the Kremlin that whispers of a profound shift in tactics. Vladimir Putin, the tsar of the digital age, now faces a quandary that would have perplexed his Soviet predecessors: how to wage a 19th-century land war when your enemy has mastered the 21st-century sky.
Let us leave aside the usual pieties about ‘escalation’ and ‘de-escalation.’ The reality is that Putin’s doctrine of ‘strategic patience’—a term borrowed from the Chinese playbook—has proven a brittle thing. For months, his forces have lumbered across the Donbas like a wounded bear, relying on mass artillery and human waves. Meanwhile, Ukraine, armed with British Storm Shadow missiles and drones, has been nibbling at the edges of Russia’s naval and energy infrastructure. The strikes on the Black Sea fleet and oil depots are not mere pinpricks. They are a calculated humiliation, designed to remind the Russian public that Putin cannot protect their homeland. And in a state where power is built on the illusion of invincibility, humiliation is a dangerous currency.
Now, the chatter from Moscow suggests a tactical pivot. Some analysts whisper that Putin may abandon the grinding offensive in the east to focus on a new strategy: a ‘total defence of the realm,’ using electronic warfare and air defence to counter the drone threat. This is the logic of the Maginot Line, applied to the 21st century. But as the French learned in 1940, static defences are only as good as the imagination that designs them. A drone does not stop at a border. It does not respect the old rules of deterrence. It is the weapon of the weak against the strong, the Davids of this world against its Goliaths.
What fascinates me is the British role in this drama. London has, with characteristic reticence, supplied the weapons that have made this possible. But there is a deeper mirror at play. In the Victorian era, British engineers built the railways that underpinned the Russian Empire. Now, British engineers build the drones that undermine it. The imperial relationship has inverted. What was once a tool of control is now a lever of liberation. The parallel is too delicious to ignore, though I suspect Whitehall would cringe at my historical exuberance.
What will Putin do? He is not a sentimentalist. He will adapt. Expect more cyber attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, more shadowy operations in African and Middle Eastern proxy states. But the drone is a permanent shift in the balance of power. The era of the tank is ending. The era of the swarm is upon us. And in that swarm, Britain—and her uncomfortable cousins in Kyiv—have found a new kind of edge.
It is a truth universally unacknowledged that empires die not by conquest, but by slow, humiliating attrition. The question is whether Putin, a man who has built his career on the cult of victory, can survive the daily drip of drone-borne defeat.
