What's behind Russia's ‘evolving' drone warfare in Ukraine?

Al Jazeera

a day ago

Kyiv, Ukraine – Swarms of Russian kamikaze drones broke through Ukrainian air defence fire early on Tuesday, screeching and shrilling over Kyiv in one of the largest wartime attacks.
Oleksandra Yaremchuk, who lives in the Ukrainian capital, said the hours-long sound of two or perhaps three drones above her house felt new and alarming.
'This horrible buzz is the sound of death, it makes you feel helpless and panicky,' the 38-year-old bank clerk told Al Jazeera, describing her sleepless night in the northern district of Obolon. 'This time I heard it in stereo and in Dolby surround,' she quipped.
Back in 2022, she crisscrossed duct tape over her apartment's windows to avoid being hit by glass shards and spent most of the night in a shaky chair in her hallway.
This week's Russian attack involved seven missiles and 315 drones – real, explosive-laden ones as well as cheaper decoys that distract and exhaust Ukraine's air defence, Kyiv's officials said.
The assault was the third since Ukraine's June 1 sting to destroy Russia's fleet of strategic bombers on four airstrips, including those in the Arctic and Siberia.
The wave of attacks also showed Russia's tactics of overwhelming Ukrainian air defence units with the sheer number of targets that approach from different directions.
'The drones have been evolving for a while, now [the Russians] use massiveness,' Andrey Pronin, one of Ukraine's drone warfare pioneers who runs a school for drone pilots in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
The attack mostly targeted Kyiv, killing one woman, wounding four civilians, damaging buildings in seven districts and causing fires that shrouded predawn Kyiv in rancid smoke.
It damaged the Saint Sophia Cathedral, Ukraine's oldest, whose construction began a millennium ago after the conversion of Kyivan Rus, a medieval superpower that gave birth to today's Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
The onslaught also hit the southern city of Odesa, killing two civilians, wounding nine and striking a maternity ward in the Black Sea port that lies close to annexed Crimea and lacks Kyiv's Western air defence systems.
The Russia-Ukraine war triggered the evolution of drones that already rewrote the playbook of warfare globally.
While Kyiv focuses on pinpointed strikes on Russian military infrastructure, oil refineries, airstrips and transport hubs, some observers believe Moscow deliberately chooses to strike civilian areas to terrify average Ukrainians – and perfects the strikes' lethality.
'Of course, [Russians] learn, every time, after each flight. They make conclusions, they review how they flew, where mobile [Ukrainian air defence] groups were,' Pronin said.
To save pricey United States-made anti-drone missiles, Ukraine employs 'mobile air defence units' that use truck-mounted machineguns often operated by women and stationed on the outskirts of urban centres.
The Russians 'used to fly the drones in twos, now they fly in threes,' Pronin said about the Iranian-made Shahed drones and their modified Russian Geran versions that carry up to 90 kilogrammes of explosives.
Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University, named three factors that contribute to the harrowing efficiency of recent drone attacks.
Firstly, the number of Russian drones rose dramatically, requiring more air defence power and, most importantly, more ammunition, he told Al Jazeera.
'The latter causes most problems, and after three massive attacks within a week, their number possibly didn't simply suffice,' he said.
Earlier this week, the White House diverted 20,000 advanced anti-drone missiles intended for Ukraine to Washington's allies in the Middle East.
Secondly, the Geran ('Geranium') drones 'evolve' and fly more than five kilometres above the ground at a height unreachable to firearms and many surface-to-air missiles, Mitrokhin said.
These days, Gerans have a range of 900km (660 miles) and are linked to their operators via satellite, US-made Starlink terminals smuggled into Russia or even hacked SIM cards of Ukrainian cellphone operators, according to Ukrainian officials and intelligence.
A Russian plant in the Volga River city of Yelabuga started manufacturing Gerans in 2023 and now churns out some 170 of them daily.
Thirdly, Russia uses more decoy drones that waste air defence ammunition, Mitrokhin said.
Therefore, Kyiv 'needs massive amounts of drones that could quickly gain the height of five to six kilometres, locate flying Gerans and their analogues and shoot them down', he said.
Instead, Ukrainian forces have focused on long-distance strike drones such as Lytyi ('Fierce') that have hit military and naval bases, oil depots, arms factories and metallurgical plants in western Russia, he said.
'Now, Ukraine needs to quickly change its strategy and produce 5,000-10,000 high-flying drone hunters a month. Which is not easy,' he concluded.
Russia's attacks underscore Washington's failure to start the peace settlement of Europe's largest armed conflict since 1945.
The attacks 'drown out the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram, hours after Tuesday's attack.
US President Donald Trump pledged to end Russia's war on Ukraine 'in 24 hours,' but his administration's diplomatic efforts yielded no results.
Despite occasional criticism of the Kremlin's warfare in Ukraine, Trump prefers not to use the White House's diplomatic and economic arsenal to force Russia to start a peace settlement or even a 30-day ceasefire that Kyiv proposed.
While Washington continued to supply US military aid in accordance with the commitments of President Joe Biden's administration, Trump's cabinet did not pledge to provide any additional arms or ammunition shipments.
'This administration takes a very different view of that conflict,' US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a congressional hearing on Tuesday.
'We believe that a negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation's interests, especially with all the competing interests around the globe,' he said, without specifying the extent of cuts.
Trump's policies leave many Ukrainians reeling.
'He single-handedly lost the Cold War to Putin,' Valerii Omelchenko, a retired police officer in central Kyiv told Al Jazeera. 'I honestly can't fathom how one can be so indecisive and cowardly towards Russia.'
The horror of drone attacks, however, helps further unite Ukrainians, he said.
'In the morning, I felt the return of what we all felt in 2022, when we were treating total strangers like family, asking them how they were, trying to help them,' he said.