Ukraine takes war to Russia with drone strikes but struggles to inflict pain on Putin

In its latest salvo, Kyiv fired more than 150 drones at oil refineries and power plants across much of Russia, which Kyiv has frequently targeted in recent months. Two refineries in the Moscow region were hit, according to local officials, while a large fire broke out at another refinery in the Tver region, northwest of the capital. No casualties were reported.

In his nightly address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that drone strikes inside Russia were part of a strategy to bring an end to the conflict by making the Russian public feel the war the same way Ukrainians do. Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, he said, is part of that strategy.

“We must push the war back from where it was brought to Ukraine, and not just into Russia’s border regions," he said. “The terrorist state must feel what war is."

In recent weeks, Zelensky has been speaking more openly of the desire to find an end to the conflict. After repeating for most of the war that Ukraine would regain all Russian occupied territory, he told the BBC’s Ukrainian service this summer that he hopes to end the “hot phase of the war" this year. He also invited Russia to join a peace conference in November.

The change in rhetoric reflects a growing weariness of the war in Ukraine, where opinion polls show growing support for negotiating a cease fire with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also points to a growing recognition that Russia’s war machine has been able to put significantly more men and machines onto the battlefield and is pressing deeper into its much smaller neighbor. At the same time, Ukraine’s ability to combat Russia’s invasion depends heavily on Western support, which is entering an unpredictable phase with impending U.S. presidential elections.

Analysts said the advance into Kursk and the strikes deep inside Russia are aimed not only at gaining a military advantage but also bolstering Ukraine’s position in any future negotiations. Ukrainian forces have now seized more than 500 square miles of territory inside the Kursk region. Last month, Kyiv also debuted a new, homegrown weapon, which Zelensky called a missile-drone hybrid capable of striking well beyond the border.

Zelensky added Sunday that he hoped President Biden and other Western leaders would soon give Ukraine the capacity to hit deep inside Russia with long-range Western-made missiles—permission that Kyiv has been seeking for months. Anxious about expanding a conflict with a nuclear power, Western leaders have thus far resisted Kyiv’s pleas.

“To force Russia into peace," Zelensky said. “We need effective tools."

Meanwhile, Russia continued its assault on the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Monday, with guided aerial bombs injuring at least seven people. The attack comes one day after missile strikes on the city struck near a shopping center, injuring at least 47 people.

By contrast, Ukraine’s strikes inside Russia have almost exclusively targeted airfields, ammunition depots and energy infrastructure, inflicting comparatively few civilian casualties.

A fire caused by an Aug. 18 strike on an oil depot in Russia’s Rostov region was extinguished only on Monday, according to Russian officials.

“This isn’t about targeting the Russian people…it’s about targeting Putin and the political system, and making them question if the war against Ukraine is really worth it," said Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired major general in the Australian Army. “Whether they can achieve that is a bit harder to ascertain, because Putin may well be willing to bear these kinds of costs in a way that Ukraine can’t."

So far, Kyiv’s attacks on Russian territory don’t appear to have changed the overall complexion of the war.

Russian troops are rapidly advancing toward the city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub for Kyiv in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Though Ukrainian officials said they hoped the incursion into Kursk would draw troops away from the eastern front, that doesn’t appear to have happened, and Ukrainian forces remain significantly outmanned in the region.

In addition, it is unclear how significantly the strikes on oil depots and power plants have affected Russia’s energy infrastructure. In major Russian cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, life is continuing on as normal, without the rolling blackouts or frequent air-raid sirens that have become a staple of life in Kyiv.

Russia has also continued missile and drone strikes on targets across Ukraine, including an attack on a children’s hospital in July and its largest missile barrage of the war last week.

Ann M. Simmons contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com