Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent, Kyiv
Watch: Kyiv’s most intense strike since June
Everyone agrees: it’s getting worse.
The Kiev people, like citizens of other Ukrainian cities, have experienced many things.
After three and a half years of fluctuating fate, they are difficult and extremely resilient.
But in the last few months, they’ve been experiencing something new. It’s a vast, coordinated wave of attacks, including many drones and missiles, often concentrated in a single city, with hundreds of drones and missiles.
Last night it was Kiev. And the previous week too. Meanwhile, it was a route sk in the far west.
Three years ago, the Shahed drones supported by Iran were relatively new. I remember hearing my first time in October 2022, squealing a lazy arc over the night sky above the southern city of Zaporia.
But now everyone is familiar with the sound, and some dive bombings lament in comparison to the stoker aircraft of Germany’s World War II.
The sound of an approaching group of drones brought hardened civilians back to bomb shelters, subways and underground parking, and for the first time since the beginning of the war, they returned to bombs and underground parking.
“The house swayed like it was made of paper,” Kiev resident Katya told me after heavy artillery fire last night.
“We spent the whole night sitting in the bathroom.”
“This is my first time going to the parking lot,” another resident, Svitrana, told me.
“The buildings shook, and we crossed the river and saw the fire.”
Attacks do not always claim life, but they spread fear and false morale.
After last week’s attack on a residential block in Kiev, his shocked grandmother Maria said that his 11-year-old grandson had turned to her at the shelter, and that he had first realised the meaning of death.
He has a scary reason. Ukraine’s UN Human Rights Surveillance Mission (HRMMU) says June has killed 232 people and injured more than 1,300 people.
Many people are killed or injured in communities close to the frontline, while others are killed in cities far from the battle.
“The surge in long-range missile and drone strikes across the country has led to even more deaths and destruction for civilians far from the frontline,” says Daniel Bell, director of HRMMU.
Reuters
Shahed’s design changes allowed us to fly much higher than before, allowing us to descend to our target from larger altitudes.
Its range has also increased to about 2,500 km, allowing it to carry more deadly payloads (up from about 50kg to 90kg, which is explosive).
Map tracking, created by local experts, shows swirls of swirls, sometimes taking patrol routes across Ukraine before returning to the target.
Often, half of them are decoys designed to disrupt and overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses.
Other straight lines indicate the path of the ballistic or cruise missile. Although the numbers are much smaller, Russia relies on to do the most damage.
An analysis by the Washington-based Institute by the War Research Institute shows an increase in Russian drone and missile strikes in the two months since Donald Trump took office in January.
March saw a slight drop in occasional spikes until May, when numbers suddenly rose dramatically.
New records are set with amazing regularity.
June saw new monthly highs for 5,429 drones, with over 2,000 people seen in the first nine days in July.
The rise in production in Russia suggests that Moscow could potentially be able to launch more than 1,000 missiles and drones in one night.
Kyiv experts warn that the country is at risk of being overwhelmed.
“If Ukraine cannot find a solution to how to deal with these drones, we will face major problems during 2025,” says former intelligence officer Ivan Spack.
“Some of these drones are about to reach military objects – we have to understand – the rest are they destroying apartments, falling into office buildings, causing great damage to the citizens.”
For all of those increased abilities, drones are not particularly sophisticated weapons. However, they represent yet another example of the vast bay in resources between Russia and Ukraine.
It also neatly illustrates the saying that stems from Joseph Stalin, the leader of World War I of the Soviet Union.
“This is a war of resources,” says Serhii Kuzan, of the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Security Cooperation Centre.
“If production of certain missiles becomes too complicated, if it’s too expensive, too many components, too many complex supply routes, we’ve concentrated on this particular type of drone and developed various changes and improvements.”
The more drones there are in one attack, the more difficult the Ukrainian air defense units are struggling to fire down them, Kuzan said. This will allow Kiev to resort to valuable supplies of jets and air-to-air missiles and fire down them.
“So when drones go in a flock, they destroy all the air defense missiles,” he says.
Therefore, President Zelensky is constantly appealing to Ukrainian allies to do more to protect the sky. Not only Patriot missiles, but also other systems line up widely – essential to combat the most dangerous Russian ballistic threats.
On Thursday, the UK government said it would sign a defense agreement with Ukraine to provide more than 5,000 air defense missiles.
Kyiv is looking for more such deals in the coming months.
EPA
This flat was demolished when a Russian drone hit a Kiev residential building
