Ukrainian Attacks on Russian Territory Have Intensified Since 2022: Claim Is True

The claim is that Ukrainian attacks on Russian cities have intensified over the course of the war. The verdict is true — and the evidence for it is documented by multiple independent and official sources across three years of conflict.

The most concrete proof of intensification is the trajectory of recorded incidents. ACLED's Ukraine Conflict Monitor shows cross-border Ukrainian strikes rising from roughly 38 incidents across the final ten months of 2022, to approximately 210 in 2023, to around 320 in just the first eight months of 2024. That is not a gradual drift — it is a near-sixfold increase in annual rate. Russian state emergency services corroborate this from their own records: authorities reported more than 50 separate drone or missile incidents targeting Belgorod city alone between January and August 2024, compared to sporadic incidents in the same region in 2022, according to Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reporting compiled by TASS.

The qualitative escalation is just as striking as the numbers. BBC Verify confirmed that in the first weeks of the war in early 2022, Ukraine conducted zero confirmed strikes on Russian territory. By mid-2023, Ukraine had struck targets in at least eight Russian oblasts, including the Moscow region — with the first confirmed large-scale drone strike on Moscow occurring on May 30, 2023, as documented by the Kyiv Independent from Ukrainian Armed Forces statements. Reuters reported in January 2024 that Ukraine had developed domestically produced long-range drones capable of reaching targets more than 1,000 km inside Russia, enabling strikes on oil refineries in Saratov and Ryazan oblasts — locations that were simply out of range in 2022. UK Defence Intelligence assessments published throughout 2023–2024 noted a consistent pattern of strikes deepening in both geographic reach and frequency compared to the conflict's initial phase.

The strongest version of a counterargument would be that Russian state media exaggerates incident counts for domestic political purposes, or that Ukrainian strikes are largely symbolic and cause limited strategic damage. Both points contain partial truth. Russian state reporting does serve political narratives, which is why cross-referencing it against ACLED, ISW, UK Defence Intelligence, and BBC Verify matters — and all of those independent sources confirm the same upward trend. It is also fair to say that many drone strikes are intercepted before reaching their targets. But interception rates do not erase the documented escalation in launch frequency, geographic ambition, or capability development.

The single most unambiguous marker of escalation came in August 2024. The Institute for the Study of War documented Ukraine's ground incursion into Kursk Oblast as the first seizure of Russian territory by a foreign force since World War II — a threshold that no drone strike count alone could capture. This moved Ukrainian offensive action from remote strikes to physical occupation of Russian soil, representing a qualitative leap beyond anything in 2022 or 2023.

The pattern to watch for in future coverage is the reverse of this claim: arguments that Ukrainian strikes are negligible or unchanged, often supported by cherry-picking a single month of lower activity or focusing only on interception rates while ignoring launch volume. Intensity is measured across time and capability, not a single snapshot. When someone disputes this trend, ask them to account for the ACLED year-on-year data, the Kursk incursion, and the 1,000-km drone range that did not exist at the war's start.