Every night, hundreds of Russian long-range drones swarm over Ukraine, swarming for hours, terrorizing the population and attacking targets from the industrial east to areas near the western border with Poland, writes BTA, citing AP.
Russia has recently been carrying out heavy attacks on Ukraine with more drones in one night than in some entire months of 2024, and analysts say the attacks are likely to increase. On July 8, Russia attacked targets in Ukraine with more than 700 drones, a record number.
Some experts say the number could soon reach more than 1,000 per day.
The significant increase in the number of drone attacks comes at a time when US President Donald Trump has given Russia until early September to reach a ceasefire agreement or threaten to face new, sweeping sanctions and tariffs - a deadline that Moscow is likely using to inflict as much damage as possible on Ukraine.
Russia has significantly increased its production of drones and looks set to continue to increase it. At the beginning of the more than three-and-a-half-year-old war, Russia imported Shahed unmanned aircraft from Iran, but then increased its domestic production and refined the original design.
Russia's Defense Ministry said it was turning its drone force into a separate branch of the armed forces. The department has also set up a special center to improve drone tactics and better train those who operate them.
Waging a "drone war"
According to Russian military bloggers and Western analysts, Russian engineers have modified the original "Shahed" to increase its altitude and make it harder to intercept. Other modifications include increasing its resistance to jamming (by electronic warfare - ed.) and the ability to carry powerful thermobaric warheads. Some even use artificial intelligence to operate autonomously.
The original "Shahed" and its Russian counterpart, the "Geran-2", have an engine that accelerates them to speeds of up to 180 km/h. A faster version, which will have jet propulsion, is reportedly in the works.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War notes that cooperation with China has allowed Russia to circumvent Western sanctions on the import of electronics and the production of drones. The Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (Ukrainian military intelligence) estimates that Russia receives up to 65 percent of the components for its "Geran-2" drones from China - allegations that Beijing denies.
Russia initially began producing Iranian drones at a plant in the city of Alabuga, located in the republic of Tatarstan. An Associated Press investigation found that among the employees of the Alabuga plant were young African women who said they were tricked into working there. Production of the "Geran-2" later began at a plant in the republic of Udmurtia, west of the Ural mountains. Ukraine has carried out drone strikes on both plants but failed to disrupt production.
A report on Sunday by state-run Zvezda television described the Alabuga plant as the largest producer of attack drones in the world.
"This is a drone war. "We are ready for it," said the plant's director, Timur Shagivaleev, adding that the enterprise produces all components, including engines and electronics, and has its own training center.
The footage from the report shows hundreds of black Geran-2 drones lined up in an assembly shop decorated with Soviet-style posters. One of them depicted the father of the Soviet nuclear bomb, Igor Kurchatov, the legendary head of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin with the words: "Kurchatov, Korolev, and Stalin live in your DNA".
Changing tactics and methods of defense
The Russian military has improved its tactics, increasingly using decoy drones called "Gerbera". They closely resemble attack drones and are intended to confuse Ukrainian defenses and distract attention from their more lethal twins.
By using a large number of drones in a single attack, Russia seeks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and prevent them from turning to the more expensive cruise and ballistic missiles that Moscow often uses in conjunction with drones to strike targets such as key infrastructure, air defense batteries, and air bases.
Former Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Mikhail Zvinchuk, who runs a popular military blog under the pseudonym "Fisherman", notes that the Russian military has learned to focus on several targets to achieve maximum effect. Drones can roam the skies over Ukraine for hours, zigzagging past defensive facilities, he wrote.
"The production of our defense industry allows for massive strikes practically daily, without the need for breaks to accumulate the necessary resources," said another military blogger, Alexander Kots. "We are no longer waving our fingers, but striking with a clenched fist in one place to make sure we hit the targets".
Ukraine is relying on mobile teams armed with machine guns as a budget answer to drones to save on the use of expensive air defense missiles supplied by the West. Kiev has also developed interceptor drones and is working to increase their production, but the steady increase in Russian attacks is straining the country's defenses.
How Russia affords all these drones
Despite international sanctions and a growing strain on the economy, Russia's military spending this year increased by 3.4 percent compared to 2024, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which estimates it at the equivalent of about $200 billion. Although budget pressures could increase, he said the current level of spending is manageable for the Kremlin.
Last year, the military was supplied with more than 1.5 million drones of various types, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
The Ukraine-based intelligence organization "Frontelligence Insight" reported earlier this month that Russia has used more than 28,000 "Shahed" and "Geran-2" drones since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, with 10 percent of the total used in the past month alone.
Although ballistic and cruise missiles are faster and more powerful, they cost millions and are only available in limited quantities. The "Geran-2" costs only a few tens of thousands of dollars - a fraction of the cost of a ballistic missile.
The drones' range of about 2,000 kilometers allows them to bypass some defense systems, and their relatively large payload of 40 kilograms of explosives makes them an extremely effective tool for what the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) calls the "brutal logic of the offensive" and has described them as "the most cost-effective munitions in Russia's arsenal for fire strikes".
"Russia's plan is to intimidate our society," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, adding that Moscow aims to use 700 to 1,000 drones a day. Over the weekend, German Major General Christian Freuding said in an interview that Russia aims to have the ability to use 2,000 drones in a single attack.
Russia may turn drones into a separate armed force
Along the front line, more than 1,000 kilometers long, short-range drones have appeared, changing the course of combat by quickly detecting and targeting soldiers and weapons within a 10-kilometer strike zone known as the "kill zone".
Initially, Russian drone units were created at the initiative of mid-level commanders and often relied on equipment purchased with private funds. But as drones became available in large numbers, the military took steps last fall to bring these units under a single command.
Putin approved the Defense Ministry’s proposal to separate drones into a separate branch of the military, called the Unmanned Systems Troops.
Russia is increasingly focusing on battlefield drones that use thin optical fibers that cannot be electronically jammed and have an extended range of 25 kilometers. Russia has also created the "Rubikon" center for training drone operators and is developing some of the best tactics.
Such drones, used by both sides, can penetrate areas deeper behind enemy lines, targeting supply, support, and command structures that were previously considered safe.
Michael Koffman, a military expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), said that Russia's advances have posed new defense challenges for Ukraine. "The Ukrainian army needs to develop ways to protect its rear by digging in much deeper," he said during a podcast.