Ukraine Drone Strikes Are Driving Vladimir Putin Into Bunker Hideaways

BusinessAerospace & DefenseUkraine Drone Strikes Are Driving Vladimir Putin Into Bunker HideawaysByKevin Holden Platt,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Kevin Holden Platt writes on space defense, SpaceX, ISS, Space War I Follow AuthorMay 09, 2026, 01:26am EDTMay 09, 2026, 01:28am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Russian rocket launchers stream through Red Square, past the hammer and sickle symbols of the Soviet Union, during an earlier Victory Day Parade. This year Moscow's massive war machines will not join the parade, for fear they might be targeted in a Ukrainian drone strike, (Photo by Ramil Sitdikov - Host Photo Agency via Getty Images)Host Photo Agency via Getty ImagesIn another sign of Ukraine’s rising military might, its expanding drone and missile strikes across Russia are driving Kremlin Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin underground - literally.Four years after launching his blitzkrieg invasion of Ukraine, expecting to seize the capital and its iconic freedom-fighter Volodymyr Zelensky within days, it is Putin who now seems to be on the run, moving from subterranean shelter to shelter as he faces Ukraine’s strengthening fleets of bomb-tipped drones.While President Zelensky marked the start of the invasion by webcasting himself and other torchbearers of Ukrainian democracy guarding the streets outside his presidential palace to trumpet their open resistance, Putin has steadily retreated since then, isolating himself inside an archipelago of massive sub-surface bunkers, says one of the West’s top scholars on Ukraine, Russia, their diametrically opposed political systems and the war that will decide whether European-style democracy prevails over tsar-like autocracy. Peter Dickinson, who heads the magazine UkraineAlert, which chronicles the conflict that will determine whether European democracies will continue their...