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Spoiler alert: It involved drones …
Ukraine’s military managed to freeze a major Russian mechanized push for six months, and now the Ukrainian Minister of Defense has revealed just how they did it.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, they used a secret drone campaign.
The operation, named Auchan, successfully knocked out more than 1,100 military targets deep behind front lines.
“Our task is to act asymmetrically against the enemy. Operation “Auchan” is just one example of how technology, intelligence, and sound planning make it possible to systematically weaken the enemy’s offensive potential,” Fedorov explained in a statement by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
Custom-built drones
The plan relied heavily on custom-built drones and deep intelligence gathering.
Armed with this data, Ukrainian forces struck 949 targets in three days during the first phase. This forced Russian troops to pull heavy gear far back from the front line.
According to the defense ministry, it took Moscow months to rebuild.
Extra money for the secretive drone push came from a special 2025 budget bump. The nation’s top military command approved the funding directly. It followed a personal request from the president.
Blasting the big guns
A second wave of the operation rolled out just a few weeks ago. This time, Ukrainian drone pilots shifted their focus toward heavy artillery systems, which remain a major threat to troops on the ground.
Engineers developed a brand-new type of ammunition specifically designed to smash these big guns. It was highly effective. The specialized weapon hit 231 artillery targets and completely wiped out 171 of them. Across both phases, the combined tally reached 1,180 targets.
“Every operation like this means more than just destroyed equipment. It means disrupted enemy plans, fewer opportunities for its offensive, and greater chances of saving the lives of our service members,” Fedorov said.
The defense minister thanked several frontline units, including the National Guard’s Lasar’s Group and the 412th Separate Unmanned Systems Brigade NEMESIS. Their success follows an even bigger milestone. Earlier, the defense ministry announced that Ukrainian forces hit over 200,000 enemy targets across the entire battlefield during June 2026 alone.
