Everyone agrees it’s getting worse. The people of Kyiv have been through a lot after three and a half years of fluctuating fortunes, but in recent months, they have been experiencing vast, coordinated waves of attacks from the air, involving hundreds of drones and missiles. Last night, it was Kyiv, and the week before too, with attacks also occurring in Lutsk in the far west.
Three years ago, Iranian-supplied Shahed drones were a relative novelty, but now everyone is familiar with the sound, and its most fearsome recent iteration, a dive-bombing wail some have compared to the German World War Two Stuka aircraft. The sound of swarms of approaching drones have sent hardened civilians back to bomb shelters, the metro, and underground car parks for the first time since the early days of the war.
Katya, a Kyiv resident, said, “The house shook like it was made of paper,” after last night’s heavy bombardment, while another resident, Svitlana, said, “I went to the parking for the first time, the building shook and I could see fires across the river.” The attacks don’t always claim lives, but they are spreading fear and eroding morale.
After an attack on a residential block in Kyiv last week, a shocked grandmother, Mariia, said her 11-year-old grandson had turned to her, in the shelter, and said he understood the meaning of death for the first time. He has every reason to be fearful, as the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years, with 232 people killed and over 1,300 injured.
Modifications in the Shahed’s design have allowed it to fly much higher than before and descend on its target from a greater altitude, with its range also increased to around 2,500km, and it’s capable of carrying a more deadly payload. Tracking maps produced by local experts show swirling masses of Shahed drones, sometimes taking circuitous routes across Ukraine before homing in on their targets, with many being decoys designed to confuse and overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences.
Analysis by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War shows an increase in Russia’s drone and missile strikes in the two months following Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, with new records being set with alarming regularity. June saw a new monthly high of 5,429 drones, and July has seen more than 2,000 in just the first nine days, with production in Russia ramping up, and some reports suggesting Moscow may soon be able to fire over 1,000 missiles and drones in a single night.
Experts in Kyiv warn that the country is in danger of being overwhelmed, with former intelligence officer Ivan Stupak saying, “If Ukraine doesn’t find a solution for how to deal with these drones, we will face great problems during 2025.” The drones are not an especially sophisticated weapon, but they do represent yet another example of the vast gulf in resources between Russia and Ukraine, illustrating the maxim that “quantity has a quality of its own.”
Serhii Kuzan, of the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre, says, “This is a war of resources,” and when production of particular missiles became too complicated, Russia concentrated on this particular type of drone and developed different modifications and improvements. The more drones in a single attack, Kuzan says, the more Ukraine’s hard-pressed air defence units struggle to shoot them down, forcing Kyiv to fall back on its precious supply of jets and air-to-air missiles.
Hence President Zelensky’s constant appeals to Ukraine’s allies to do more to protect its skies, not just with Patriot missiles, but with a wide array of other systems too. On Thursday, the British government said it would sign a defence agreement with Ukraine to provide more than 5,000 air defence missiles, and Kyiv will be looking for many more such deals in the coming months.
Source link
