Russian troops in Ukraine fell back for the second month in a row in April, giving up an estimated 46 square kilometers of occupied territory last month after giving up 13 square kilometers in March, according to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.

Through the spring of 2025, the Russians steadily advanced at a pace of around 40 square kilometers a month. This year's Russian retreat means something has changed. By now it's worth asking if Russia's usual spring offensive has been delayed or even defeated.

One mapper and analyst senses delay, for now. But delay that could foretell a longer-term loss of momentum for the Russians. Another mapper and analyst warns against complacency on the Ukrainian side. In the air if not on the ground, the Russians are far from giving up.

"It seems the Russian offensive has been postponed, if there will be one at all," Ukrainian mapper Vitaly wrote. According to Vitaly, the Russians' main problem all along the 1,200-km front line is "manpower supply."

Yes, the Russian force in Ukraine still numbers more than 700,000 troops, the same overall strength as last year—and enough to lend Russian regiments a significant manpower advantage in the most important sectors. And yes, the Kremlin is still recruiting more than 20,000 fresh troops every month through generous, but potentially unsustainable, cash bonuses.

Explore further

“Just reaching the front line has become very risky”: Ukraine’s AI drones are hunting Russia’s supply vans

But escalating Ukrainian drone strikes are killing at least as many Russians as the Kremlin recruits every month, intensifying the strain on an occupying force that has been struggling to mass enough troops in the right sectors to sustain an offensive despite heavy losses.

Massing troops quickly and replacing combat losses with equal speed requires the Russians to maintain a strategic reserve of around 20,000 troops just behind the front line. The only alternative is to mass troops for an offensive in one area by pulling troops from another area, but that kind of trade risks weakening Russian positions and inviting local Ukrainian counterattacks—a dynamic we observed earlier this year as Ukrainian troops gained ground the southeast around the town of Huliaipole after Russian troops shifted north to press their offensive through the twin cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.

Russian commanders relearned the hard way in the southeast that a strategic reserve is critical. But they've struggled to generate enough fresh troops, month after month, to build up and maintain that reserve.

Manpower problem

The Russians' current manpower generation problem began last year. "The Russian military failed to achieve its goals in 2025 due to the heavy [losses] sustained during offensive operations," Ukrainian-American analysis team Two Marines explained.

"If the current recruitment trend continues until the end of the year, the Russian army will only fulfill its recruitment plan by 80-85%," Two Marines added. "Even for Russia’s Unmanned Systems Forces, there is a catastrophic shortage of recruits thus far. After the first four months of the year, Russia has only met 16% of its recruitment quota for the year."

It certainly doesn't help that Ukraine has significantly expanded its campaign of drone strikes across the Russian logistical zone, which extends around 200 km from the front line. Striking depots, trains and trucks at a pace of hundreds per month, Ukrainian drone units are weakening Russian regiments before they can even launch an assault. "Supplies are attacked in production and transit before they reach the front," Ukrainian analysis group Tochnyi observed.

The intensifying pressure from Ukrainian drones certainly bodes ill for Russia's much-delayed annual offensive. But the Russians aren't exactly idle in the air. If there's a case to be made that a Russian offensive is still in the works, it's in the pattern of glide-bomb strikes on Ukrainian defenses.

Explore further

Russia’s T-72AM is a very old tank with a fresh coat of paint. Expect it to stay parked like other tanks.

Ukraine might have the drone edge. But Russia has the edge in manned warplanes lobbing precision glide bombs from tens of kilometers behind the front line. The KAB bombs wreck Ukrainian fortifications, kill and maim Ukrainian troops and complicate Ukraine's own front-line logistics.

On the "hottest areas" of the front line around Hulialpole in the southeast, Dobropillia north of Pokrovsk in the east as well as Sloviansk in the east, "Russia is constantly hitting everything with KABs," French mapper Clément Molin noted. Molin claimed he identified 6,600 KAB impacts along just 150 km of the front in just the last three months. And there are probably many thousands of additional impacts Molin conceded he couldn't pinpoint.

The bomb blasts threaten to weaken the Ukrainian defense even more than drone strikes weaken the Russian offense, potentially allowing a belated Russian offensive to finally kick off. The "challenge for the next few months is to counter the massive ... KAB campaign," Molin stressed.

But with too few long-range surface-to-air missile batteries and too few manned fighters with long-range air-to-air missiles, Ukraine has few options for intercepting the KAB bombers before they release their deadly munitions.

So in a sense, it's a race. Can Ukraine drone Russian forces into submission before Russia bombs Ukrainian forces into submission?

We don't know how many Hornet one-way attack drones US firm Swift Beat has produced for Ukraine. But there are enough of the approximately 2-meter wingspan drones that they occasionally cross paths with each other as they hunt for targets.

At least two of the drone meet-ups, one propeller-driven Hornet capturing another Hornet on its forward-looking camera, are captured in a new montage of drone strikes posted by the Ukrainian National Guard's 1st Azov Corps.

The crowded skies are the point. Ukrainian drone units are striking Russian supply trucks, depots and rear-area infrastructure deeper and more often than ever before—and the front-line regiments those trucks were meant to supply are arriving short on fuel, ammunition and people. When they arrive at all.

Also captured in the montage: a series of Hornet strikes on Russian trucks. This spring, Ukrainian drone forces dramatically escalated their strikes on the Russian logistical zone stretching a couple of hundred kilometers from the disputed gray zone.

The number of these mid-range strikes more than doubled between February and March to a new high of no fewer than 288 strikes, according to analysis group Tochnyi. That's 288 raids targeting Russian supply depots; the trucks, vans and trains that haul supplies; the electrical grid powering the rear-area logistical system; and the air defenses protecting all of the above.

The pace of mid-range drone strikes is only increasing. Tochnyi observed 99 mid-range strikes in just the first 10 days of April. Blowing up more of the Russians' supplies and reinforcements as they're en route to front-line regiments, Ukrainian drone units are weakening those regiments before they can even begin an assault across the gray zone.

For the Russians, "just reaching the front line (which is the prerequisite for an assault) has become very risky," French mapper and analyst Clément Molin noted. The intensifying attacks on Russian logistics may explain why Russia's traditional spring offensive is off to such an unimpressive start this year.

According to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., Russian forces lost 67 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in April after losing 31 square kilometers in March. Their last monthly gain, in February, was just 119 square kilometers.

From Mariupol to wherever's next

An array of Ukrainian drone types carry out the raids in the logistical zone, including Fire Point FP-1 and FP-2 drones that pilots on the ground directly control via satellite or mesh radio network. The first-person-view FP-1s and FP-2s are vulnerable to Russian jamming that can interrupt their control signals, however, which is why more Ukrainian units are deploying AI-assisted drones that rely less on direct human control.

AI-assisted drones including the Hornet. Yes, the drone pipes video back to its operators via satellite or mesh radio, but its onboard AI spots targets and steers the drone to a strike, all by itself. It's apparent that many Hornets are programmed to look for Russian trucks. And they're doing so as far away as the ruins of Mariupol, 100 km from the southeastern front line.

"Enemy forces are using Ukrainian roads in the city and its outskirts to move personnel and military hardware," the 1st Azov Corps stated. The corps "continues to establish a 'sanitary zone' for Russian logistics."

"The strike depth will increase," the 1st Azov Corps pledged as more drones fill the sky over the logistical zone and occasionally even cross paths. Hornets reportedly range as far as 150 km, so the corps isn't bluffing.

More drones will fly, farther and farther. More Russian trucks will burn. More Russian regiments will suffer shortages of people and supplies.

Explore further

Donetsk was Russia’s safe rear. Now AI drones hunt its supply trucks.

There are people who know things, and there are people who will say them. Simon Papuashvili, Program Director of the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), is rare in being both.

The Brussels-based NGO documents killings, torture, and abductions through open-source investigations — and in 2016, their evidence contributed to the International Court of Justice proceedings against Russia over crimes in occupied Crimea.

Which is why, when I spotted him at B4Ukraine, a conference on strengthening sanctions against Russia, I wanted to talk to him.

What strikes you first is that he doesn't convey urgency. He is calm, with the occasional trace of a smile that suggests he has already thought through whatever you're about to ask. What he says, however, is not calm at all. He is one of the few voices willing to state it plainly: Europe has adopted sanction after sanction against Russia, and then, quietly, looked the other way on enforcement.

Can you tell what works better, kinetic or economic sanctions? 

Well, I think they're both important, and they should be seen as complementary rather than one or the other.

If you look at the Russian state budget, a large part of its revenue comes from the sale of fossil fuels. Still, four years after the full-scale war, a big chunk of the fossil fuels that Russia sells are being bought by the European states. We're talking about hundreds of billions of euros that go directly into the Russian state budget.

Taking this into consideration, the most effective sanction would be to basically say no to buying Russian oil and gas. That will have a direct, immediate impact on the war and Russia's ability to continue it.

Is Russia's gas and oil biggest part of Russian budget?

Well, the most conservative estimate is 30%, and even if we stick to that, 30% of income is a lot, you know. Russia has still been able to operate a shadow fleet, beside Europeans continue to buy oil and gas.

"The price cap on oil and gas, mostly on oil, has not been effectively enforced. There are things that can be done in this regard," Papuashvili said. 

What has worked with sanctions and what hasn't, and how can we tell?

The sanctions' impact has been limited, and this is partly because we have a big problem with enforcement. 

This problem is partly due to the fact that sanctions are not far-reaching and come very slowly and painfully. Also, it's because Europeans and Americans, Ukraine's allies, don't have, and haven't been put in place, proper institutions that are well-resourced to ensure that the sanctions in place are effectively enforced.

"So you can adopt as many sanctions as you want, but if you don't enforce them, there's no point. We have a big problem with enforcement, or the lack of enforcement," the human rights lawyer explained. 

Experts say that Russia's overall goals — Ukraine and Europe's destruction — will not change, even if its economy declines 

To gauge the war, you need resources. War is expensive, and you can't conduct a war if you don't have money. It’s very simple.

The Russians are used to living in harsh conditions, and they probably still have room to go in terms of how bad it can get.

"But if the government of Russia does not have money to produce drones, missiles, military equipment, and pay the soldiers, they just will not be able to sustain this. Full stop," he stressed. 

It's not just about worsening economic conditions. Generally speaking, it's about financing actual military combat operations.

We can see that Hungary demanded that Russian gas be delivered to Europe through Druzhba pipeline, despite many years of genocide…

I do hope that, in the medium to long term, this Hungarian government and other European nations disengage from dependence on Russian fossil fuels and build infrastructure for renewable energy that can make this possible.

Saying no to Russian fossil fuels cannot possibly happen overnight; it doesn't matter how much Ukraine wants this. It takes some time. But what is clear is that we're like four years in the full-scale war, and if the European nations, including Hungary, had wanted to do that, they could have done a lot. 

Hungary and its former prime minister, Orban, did not want to do that. Hopefully, this will change now that they have the new government.

However, it’s clear that Peter Magyar would have likely avoided implementing unpopular decisions amid the election campaign. As it could have had a negative impact on the Hungarian economy, leading to him losing elections and, in the future, to Fidesz returning to power.

So maybe problem is talking to society and explaining why prices are rising? 

Absolutely, yeah. Finland has been doing a great job in this regard. They take this whole-society approach, with drastic policy measures, including saying no to Russian fossil fuels. They spend a great deal of time, energy, and resources explaining to society why they do this, why it will be painful, and why they have to endure this pain.

They run information campaigns, produce explainers that are shared on social media, have dedicated TV programs, and people write articles in the news to explain this.

What do Western governments believe about how this war ends? How? Do they have strategy?

Unfortunately, they don't. I don't see that, especially in Europe. The US is a particular case right now.

"The Europeans don't seem to have a vision for how to end this war. That's a big problem," Papuashvili noted. 

I really believe that if they wanted to end the war, they have the power to do so. If they say, "In one year, we want the Russian economy to be in tatters, and we want Russian troops to be out of all temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, and we want Ukraine to join the EU", this is possible. But they are not doing it. They're not doing it because of…

… because they feel comfortable with what is going on right now? “Ukraine fights, but Russia doesn't lose? 

Unfortunately, it is so. 

Back in September, the Kremlin began pulling as many as 1,000 1970s-vintage T-72A tanks out of long-term storage and preparing them for modernization. This week, we caught our first glimpse of these very old, but freshly upgraded, Russian tanks in active service. Meet the T-72AM.

Their appearance is significant for two reasons. It's evidence Russia is now digging deep enough into Soviet-era storage to bring 50-year-old tanks to the front. And it's a test of whether tanks that old, with armor that thin, can survive a battlefield that already kills the new ones.

Video of the 46-ton, three-person T-72AM in service with the 1442nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment recently appeared online. The 1442nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment is deployed just east of the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Kostiantynivka is arguably the main focus of Russia's spring offensive. To march on the free cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from the south, the Russians may first need to advance through Kostiantynivka.

That offensive is off to a very slow start, likely owing to escalating Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian supply lines that are weakening front-line regiments before they can even begin an assault. If and when the Russians finally gain momentum, achieve some kind of breakthrough and once again deploy large numbers of armored vehicles for a push toward Kostiantynivka, those T-72AMs could see their first combat.

If that happens, and that's a big "if," expect losses. The refurbished, enhanced T-72AM is still a 50-year-old tank in its bones. Yes, it's probably got new sensors and fire-controls. It also has many of the add-on protections the Russians have developed to help defend their tanks from the tiny explosive drones that are everywhere all the time over 1,200-km front line of Russia's 51-month wider war on Ukraine.

Added protection

These add-ons include explosive reactive armor, chains, rubber mats and a drone-blocking "cope cage" atop the turret. If the 1442nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment does what most Russian regiments do, it'll eventually add additional protections, potentially including metal spines that block incoming drones.

The problem is the basic armor. The T-72A was one of the earliest mass-produced T-72s in Soviet service and sports thin armor compared to later models. The best-protected part of the turret, the frontal arc, is just 280 mm thick. The T-72B that followed the T-72A added armor to the turret, among other enhancements.

So the T-72A is a flimsier tank than newer T-72 models including the latest T-72B3M. But that may not matter very much on a battlefield where even the best-protected tanks are extremely vulnerable to the twin threat of buried mines exploding underneath them and explosive drones barreling down from above.

Explore further

Russia’s last 1,000 tanks are 50 years old—but Ukraine should still worry

It's not for no reason that Russian forces have largely parked their surviving armored fighting vehicles after losing around 14,000 of them in Ukraine. These days Russian regiments tend to attack on foot, theorizing that small groups of infantry stand a better chance of avoiding drone surveillance as they infiltrate across the wide disputed gray zone.

The thousands of replacement tanks Russian industry has either built new since 2022 or fetched from long-term storage have more than replaced the 4,400 tanks the Russians have lost in Ukraine. But that doesn't mean those replacement tanks are going to attack in large numbers anytime soon.

The gray zone is a kill zone for all armored vehicles, whether they're brand new or 50 years old.

There will be no aerial ceasefire for Russia's 9 May Victory Day celebration in Moscow. Russian air defenses are massing around the city to prevent Ukrainian drones and missiles from raining down on the Russian parade. But Ukrainian drones have already penetrated that air defense shield. They could do it again.

Ukraine had proposed a temporary ceasefire to coincide with Victory Day, when Russians commemorate the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany. But Russian missiles and drones kept pummeling Ukrainian cities. Now there will be no ceasefire, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Wednesday.

"I thank every state and leader who supported Ukraine’s proposal for a full ceasefire," Zelensky wrote. "Russia responded to it only with new strikes and attacks. Throughout the entire day, almost every hour, reports of strikes have been coming in from different regions of Ukraine. Ukraine will act in kind."

Russian forces are preparing for Ukrainian strikes on Moscow. Stripping air defenses from other cities in Russia, and even from the front line Ukraine, they've massed those defenses around Moscow. Mapper DroneBomber has pinpointed no fewer than 101 air defense positions in three layers. They include:

These shooters, supported by an array of radars and other sensors, pose a serious threat to incoming Ukrainian drones and missiles. In theory.

Air defense gaps

In practice, there are gaps in the Moscow air defense network. On Monday, a Ukrainian drone—apparently a Fire Point FP-1—threaded past the radars, missiles and guns and struck a residential building in Moscow’s wealthy Mosfilm neighborhood, 6 km from the Kremlin.

As a signal, that FP-1 raid was "quite routine," according to Mark Krutov, who scrutinizes satellite imagery for Radio Free Europe. The upcoming Victory Day parade will be the sixth since Russia widened its war on Ukraine. Ukrainian drones have been striking Moscow since at least May 2023.

But the Ukrainians have yet to directly target the 9 May parade, even as Russian drones and missiles relentlessly strike Kyiv and other major cities—even on holidays. "The Russian military strikes Kyiv with missiles and drones every week anyway, without any clear goals or reasonable conditions for stopping," Krutov noted.

Explore further

“Just reaching the front line has become very risky”: Ukraine’s AI drones are hunting Russia’s supply vans

Zelensky may finally be running out of patience. Whether he orders Ukrainian deep strike forces to attack Moscow on 9 May remains to be seen. But he struck a firm tone on Wednesday. "Depending on the situation overnight and tomorrow, we will also determine our fully justified responses," Zelensky stated. "Enough is enough."

Ukrainian forces are better equipped than ever for strikes at targets deep inside Russia. Fire Point FP-1 drones range as far as 1,600 km with a 120-kg warhead. Sport planes converted into one-way drones range at least as far and carry even more explosives. Fire Point FP-5 cruise missiles reach as far as 3,000 km with whopping 1,150-kg warheads.

Ukrainian missiles and drones have been striking more than 60 major targets inside Russian every month for several months, now. Whether the Victory Day celebration is the next major target is something we won't know until the Russian troops line up for the parade on 9 May.

Whether Ukraine strikes is a political decision. But it's obvious it can strike, despite the many missiles and guns the Russians have deployed around Moscow.

Steadily ramping up drone sorties and cruise missile barrages starting this spring, Ukrainian forces are now hitting Russian air defenses, depots and electrical infrastructure in occupied Ukraine and in Russia itself at a rate of around 300 major strikes every month. 10 per day.

The middle- and deep-strike escalation "creates a layered attrition" that's fraying Russian logistics and depleting the combat power of front-line regiments, according to analysis group Tochnyi. "Supplies are attacked in production and transit before they reach the front; and the [air defense] environment over the occupied territory is simultaneously degraded to enable further strikes."

Wondering why Russia's annual spring offensive has, so far, been unusually anemic this year—capturing just 94 square kilometers in April 2026 compared to 226 square kilometers in April 2025? It's increasingly apparent Russian units are struggling to move sufficient troops, ammunition and supplies toward the disputed gray zone. Attacks on supply lines weaken Russian forces before they can even begin an assault.

One-way attack drones such as the Fire Point FP-1 and FP-2 account for a most of Ukraine's 300 monthly middle and deep strikes, but reusable drone bombers are in the mix, too. Dropping bombs and then returning to base for more bombs, the reusable Horynych E-300 and Aeroprakt A-22 two-way drone bombers—built on commercial sport plane airframes that retail around $50,000, with factory-built variants reportedly running $250,000 to $450,000 depending on configuration—help drive down the overall cost of the Ukrainian strike campaign.

The pilotless, propeller-driven sport planes are reusable in part because they're tough—and capable of absorbing Russian ground fire that might bring down a smaller, flimsier one-way drone. A recent image apparently captured by a Russian interceptor drone depicts one E-300 with scores of bullet holes in its wings and fuselage. It's possible the interceptor drone ultimately downed the E-300, finally achieving what the gunfire failed to achieve.

Many damaged E-300s manage to drop their bombs and land safely. Operators from the Unmanned Systems Forces' 1st Center are asking for $23,000 to repair battle-damaged E-300s.

Damaged but flyable

The damage to there-and-back drones is a function of Ukraine's expanding strike campaign. Increasing medium and deep strikes by an order of six in 10 months—from 60 in July 2025 to 354 in March—the USF and other Ukrainian drone forces are increasingly dominating the sky over occupied Ukraine and the nearest Russian oblasts.

"The target analysis indicates that the campaign is organized around three interrelated lines of effort, with the primary focus on dismantling Russian [air defense] systems," Tochnyi explained. "Nearly a third of all strikes are aimed specifically at air defense targets."

"Alongside this," Tochnyi added, "logistics interdiction emerges as the second major pillar. Strikes against storage facilities, particularly ammunition depots as well as fuel infrastructure and rail networks, form over a quarter of total activity." Those attacks have led to what Tochnyi characterized as "observed reductions in Russian artillery usage."

¹ Zozulia is capable of 2,100 km at reduced payload but currently deployed in the middle-strike role.
² Trembita is a cheap pulsejet saturation and decoy weapon ($3,000–$4,000 per unit), not a precision platform.
³ Both run dual-mode: reusable bomber or one-way kamikaze. Horynych converted unit cost ~$50,000.

Meanwhile, raids targeting the power grid in occupied territories and adjacent Russian oblasts "support both military and occupation functions," Tochnyi noted. "When combined with attacks on telecommunications infrastructure, this demonstrates a broader attempt to degrade operational coherence and administrative control."

The big picture is becoming clearer. Striking increasingly relentlessly with one-way and reusable munitions and drones, Ukraine is slowly achieving from the air what its outnumbered ground forces have struggled to achieve from the ground: dramatically slowing the pace of Russian advances.

Explore further

“Just reaching the front line has become very risky”: Ukraine’s AI drones are hunting Russia’s supply vans

Russia’s invasion has created a defense tech revolution that’s going global as Ukraine-style warfare proliferates. Some defense companies will succeed. Many others will fail. 

The difference between them is their willingness to learn from what Ukrainian forces need on the battlefield, warfighters said at the Kyiv Defense Tech Week, which took place between 27 April and 3 May. 

Ukraine’s defense industry more than doubled in 2025, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. Foreign firms are coming in greater numbers to test their products in live-fire conditions or offer them to the men and women standing between Russia and the rest of Europe. 

But Ukrainian combat veterans said that for every brilliant answer to a real battlefield challenge, there is an overengineered solution in search of a problem, or a copy of something that already exists. 

They then named what’s missing: mesh communications systems, better batteries, scalable UGVs, smarter electronic warfare, systems for infantry protection, among other technologies. Scalability and standardization are critical factors, too, as brigades try to move from a chaotic “zoo” of systems towards reliable supply chains that require minimal field tinkering. 

Ukrainian and foreign firms looking to get into the Ukrainian market—or draw lessons from it to succeed in modern conflicts elsewhere—and those who would invest in these companies would do well to keep the following lessons in mind. 

What tells you that a company is worth it?

“It's their openness to hearing the feedback, good or bad,”  Mykyta Puz, a technology liaison with the Azov Corps, told Euromaidan Press in an interview. “And their ability to quickly adapt to the feedback that they're hearing if we're talking about startups.”

Very often, companies, especially startups, tend to build something they think is valid based on cursory research, he said.  

For example, he said he'd been pitched a fast, reusable interceptor drone with a big wingspan. It was cool in concept, but its radar cross-section would get it clocked as a Russian Shahed and shot down by friendlies.

In another example, manufacturers pitched a product whose selling point is radio stealth. Puz said this misunderstands the battlefield, which is “so oversaturated with thousands of signals that it's not a concern anymore. And you spent like half a year several million investments in order to make you ‘radio silent.’ Why would you do that?"

Puz said Azov and Ukrainian forces more broadly are looking for companies that see a clear problem and set out to find a solution for it. The problem has to be deeper than "we need to shoot down aerial targets." Context matters. 

“When I ask the guys, like, what is your concept of operation? And they say, ‘you tell us.’ I'm like, no guys, you got to start from the concept of operation from a scenario and then you build the technology on it. I don't need ultra super quantum high tech, you know.”

Captain Markiian Yatsyniak of the 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment RAID, said something similar.

“Only specific kinds of manufacturers who are still in close, efficient communication with end-users like us… may have a chance to be successful in expanding and exporting Ukrainian experience all over the globe.” 

Puz and Yatsyniak said that with the current pace of innovation on the battlefield, companies have three or four months between tackling an idea and showing that it works on the battlefield, occasionally given a bit of grace time for manufacturing.  

“If we're interested in a certain solution for a particular thing, we give them at least four-five months to show efficiency,” Yatsyniak said. “If not, we just sweep the page.” 

What specific problems need to be solved right now?

Radio communication and mesh networks

“There are two areas where I think innovation needs to happen,” Puz said. The first is “communication systems… data links, command and control systems. Mesh systems are becoming a buzzword. Like really scalable, robust mesh systems designed for battlefield use.”

In other words, a system that can cover 100 square kilometers with a network of mesh nodes that can provide stable data connection for equipment to fly or drive through, with redundancy. “This is what I haven’t seen at all, yet.”

Yatsyniak added that the Ukrainian military just needs radios in general, as units are forced to wait months to get their hands on some. “The shelves of Ukrainian UAV manufacturers are full of drones, but empty of radios.”

Better batteries

Another need is high-capacity batteries, Puz said. “Something above 400 watt-hours per kilogram. I think this is where there is a huge amount of opportunity for great companies, but it requires advanced chemistry knowledge.”

Pawell Power is one success story in this space: through careful iteration, they figured out how to double battery efficiency last year. But there is plenty of room for additional innovation from other companies. 

More simple, scalable Unmanned Ground Vehicles

Andrei Kushniarou, Commander of the 108 Battalion “Da Vinci Wolves” and UGV expert, said that cheap, simple UGVs are in demand, as his unit’s goal is to equip every small team of soldiers with a UGV that can go in front to demine, carry equipment, or draw FPV fire. 

According to KSE, the UGV market is still very young and has yet to reach its full potential, worth just $252 million in 2025. Still, this market is “highly diversified” by manufacturer, with room for producers to enter if they have good products.

Better Unmanned Ground Vehicles for casevac

Kushniarou added that in spite of glowing news reports on UGVs evacuating wounded troops, really good casevac machines are not available on the market—casualty evacuation is being done by machines specced for logistics tasks and aren’t great at handling the wounded. 

“Right now on the market, there are zero UGVs for medical evacuation,” he said. “Medical evacuation is a priority for many units… for that, we simply don't have any specialized solutions right now.”

Even as logistics UGVs proliferate, casevac remains extremely challenging, with several soldiers telling Euromaidan Press that it can often take days and multiple steps to pull wounded people out of their positions to a safe area. 

More protection for infantry

“We should improve the abilities of the regular infantry man or operator,” Kushniarou said. “It's like a shield and spear battle from ancient times. Your attacking ability and your defense ability. Our attacking ability now was significantly improved by FPVs.”

“But the defense of the regular soldier is on a really low level. Probably the last significant improvement was armor vests. We need something new. We need individual interceptors to remove FPVs, some anti-FPV turrets, some different types of defense on the field and so on.”

Wider-band EW and detection systems

Callsign Archean, an electronic warfare specialist with Azov, said that EW and drone detection systems that work across broader ranges of frequencies are needed. 

“EW solutions must be universal. It must work from, 400 MHz to 8 GHz minimum, if we’re talking about jamming or spoofing options,” he said. “If we talk about detection today, we like to see solutions from 200 MHz to 15 GHz.”

Communication protocols and modulation are also fertile ground for innovation, Archean added.

Ukraine’s EW sector has expanded rapidly in recent years, moving from a relatively small and volatile segment to one of the key technology-driven components of the defense ecosystem. In 2025, this part of the market generated $220 million, growing 3.4 times.

AI-enhanced analytics

Multiple veterans said that the most useful direction of AI technologies is in analyzing data after their job is done: crunching through reconnaissance intel, assisting with logistics, enhancing jamming and electronic intelligence. 

These tools help with assimilating the terabytes of data Ukraine collects each day. They both increase the speed at which military decisions can be made and also tend to amplify the impact of any one decision, retired Lt. Col. Christopher Ghorbani of the US Army said in a previous interview. 

Other useful AI tools include converting photos and videos from drones into 3D maps for better situational awareness. 

Working with troops to identify further problems 

While feedback from the troops is important, not all brigades have an equal understanding of what their principal challenges are, according to Kushniarou. 

“We're facing a problem of creating analytical centers” at the brigade level, he said. “In famous units like Azov and Khartia, this problem is already close to being solved. But for many brigades, they simply don’t have any analytical centers.” 

Such centers are important for troops to outline their needs. This is especially critical for UGVs, to figure out what works best and what to buy. Many UGV operators are relatively inexperienced.

“And this is also an area where you can invest,” Kushniarou said. “It's analytics, it's statistics, and it's communication between different UGVs."

"It's the planning of missions, also a great problem. I know cases where operators use the same route to deliver logistics for a half a year.”

“My advice is that investors should come directly to units and not only listen to them, but try to work with them to find out what's really happening.”

Scalability, standardization more important than FPV #1,000

Multiple veterans said that they don’t need yet another FPV that’s functionally the same as the majority of others on the market, while also coming with its own teething troubles that the unit must spend time fixing.

“Everyone… is making drones which are conceptually the same thing,” Puz said. “But the problem is that none of this is standardized or scalable. Quality control is always a very big problem because you cannot rely on stable equipment to come in.”

Most units are forced to maintain their own workshops or even R&D laboratories to modify or improve equipment that comes to them, in order to make it combat-capable. Few things are ready out of the box. This is especially an issue with UGVs, soldiers said. 

"It's a terrible zoo inside of a lot of units when you have 20, 25 different types of UGV's, none of them are working from the box,” Kushniarou said. “We have to modify everything.”

While continued innovation and incremental improvement will remain important, the time has come to invest in standardization, industrialization, and scalability.

Ukraine doesn't have the kind of industrial base Western countries do, with its Soviet-inherited industry eroding over the years and being pounded with Russian attacks. The scientific base has eroded from brain drain. However, foreign companies lack the awareness of what to make compared to Ukrainians. 

“The trend is that both of us are trying to industrialize through the framework of joint ventures,” Puz said. “Or Western companies opening up offices in Ukraine.” 

“There needs to be a model of cooperation. It's slowly getting there. There is a good trend that I'm observing but let's see how it goes.”

What kinds of technologies are overhyped?

There are a variety of products and tech that the veterans see as overhyped — from overly-expensive, over-engineered solutions, to the role of battlefield AI.  

While machine learning is helping make drones more precise at navigating or locking onto targets, full-spectrum autonomy is a long way off, they said.

“Total BS: replacing the human factor in UAV operations. Even until now we cannot hand over the control to the AI,” Yatsyniak said. “We have manual real people, operators who make final decisions. So any advertisement by manufacturers that their drones are flying fully autonomously is a lie.”

Puz said that drone swarms are a way off as well, not just technologically, but in their purpose and application as well. “I still have yet to see any proper concept of operation for those.” 

While drone swarms would be useful for a paramilitary group conducting terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure, they are less useful for an organized military fighting another military force, he believes. 

“We don't have this kind of problem to solve,” he told Euromaidan Press. “But I would love to be wrong about that.”

Ukraine's middle-range zones are striking harder and more often, fraying Russia's front-line logistics at the very moment Russian field armies should be launching their usual spring offensive.

Russian regiments need buhankas to move troops and supplies from rear bases to staging points near the front. Blowing up more of the vans with increasingly far-flying, accurate and autonomous drones, the Ukrainians are starving Russian regiments of supplies and manpower before the regiments even get a chance to engage Ukrainian defenders along the gray zone—and Russia's spring 2026 offensive is the first one in this war to stall before it started.

For the Russians, "just reaching the front line (which is the prerequisite for an assault) has become very risky," French mapper and analyst Clément Molin noted.

The drumbeat of buhanka hits seems to be quickening.

On or just before Monday, a Ukrainian Hornet drone blasted a buhanka right outside a Russian brigade headquarters, likely tens of kilometers inside the logistical zone stretching as far as 200 km behind the gray zone. "We are deep in the rear, not far from the forward base of one of the brigades," one witness to the strike wrote.

The occupants of that particular buhanka may have thought they were safe from drones. The van was "packed to the brim with electronic warfare systems," the witness wrote. "Yet the weather is clear enough for flight operations. And nowadays, that is often the deciding factor for everything."

Left unsaid by the witness is that the Hornet drone is highly autonomous thanks to its AI targeting system, which can be programmed to recognize buhankas and other targets—and home in on them without help from a human operator.

Radio jamming and other traditional forms of electronic warfare don't work against A.I. drones, as they don't rely on radio signals to search and destroy. Other Hornets operated by the Ukrainian 3rd National Guard Brigade have been hunting buhankas and other supply vehicles around Donetsk city, as far as 80 km from the gray zone in eastern Ukraine.

AI targeting

The Ukrainian Bulava drone also has A.I. for targeting. Which may be how a Bulava blew up a buhanka at a Russian checkpoint on or just before Thursday.

All these van strikes have a corrosive effect on Russian logistics. And that corrosion can be felt in the gray zone, as Russian regiments struggle to conduct assaults with too few troops and supplies.

"Ukraine has largely stymied Russian advances across the front line, blunting the Russian spring-summer 2026 offensive thus far," the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, DC reported.

The Russians not only aren't advancing, overall—they're actually falling back. According to ISW, Russian forces lost 67 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in April after losing 31 square kilometers in March. Their last monthly gain, in February, was just 119 square kilometers.

Explore further

More Ukrainian drones are hitting Russian supply lines. The hardened targets are fine.

"The start of 2026 is not going very well for the Russian army," Molin quipped. And it may get worse for the Russians. Every week they fail to seize the initiative is another week Ukrainian forces can devote to strengthening their fortifications all along the 1,200-km gray zone.

"In addition to the classic obstacle lines," Molin explained, "the Ukrainian army has placed barbed wire everywhere along the front, and we've already seen the conclusive results of this strategy."

Russian forces are attacking while weak, and running headlong into new trenches, concrete obstacles and barbed wire. Further slowed by the fortifications, Russian troops are easier targets for the same Ukrainian drones that are also blowing up the Russians' buhankas—and starving the troops before they even attack.

Ukrainian drones are striking harder and more often across occupied Ukraine and even deep into Russia itself. At the same time, Russia's spring offensive is off to a slow start—if not already faltering.

The two things are almost certainly related. Russian forces still enjoy a manpower and firepower advantage over Ukrainian defenders. But Ukraine's intensifying heavy drone strikes are fraying Russian logistics and chipping away at Russian regiments' combat power before the regiments even begin their attacks.

There's still time for Russia's usual spring offensive to gain momentum, potentially leading to significant territorial gains for Moscow. But there's another possible outcome for the regime of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin. "With large-scale deep strikes on his territory, and a ground campaign not generating tempo, 2026 may be the worst year yet for Putin," commented Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army general.

Russia Matters, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, quantified what Ryan described as the "sputtering" Russian offensive. Borrowing data from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, Russia Matters found that Russian forces suffered a loss of 67 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in the month ending 28 April.

The Russians have actually been falling back, overall, for two months now. Russian forces gave up 31 square kilometers in March after gaining 119 square kilometers in February.

The important caveat, according to Russia Matters, is that the Russians' losses are net losses. Moscow's regiments have retreated from some settlements in southeastern Ukraine but, according to Ukrainian mapper DeepState, have advanced in 10 other settlements: some in the southeast and others along the most important axes in the east including the Pokrovsk-to-Kramatorsk axis and the Chasiv Yar-to-Kramatorsk axis.

But losses are losses, and reason for optimism in Kyiv if they continue. They're also evidence that Ukraine's drone campaign is working. "It seems Ukraine want to use strategic drones as a game-changer," mapper Clément Molin explained.

Molin mapped 440 drone strikes in April alone: 330 mid-range strikes inside occupied Ukraine and another 110 long-range strikes inside Russia.

Mid-range strikes in the Russian logistical zone, stretching as far as 200 km from the disputed gray zone, have an immediate military impact as supply trucks, regimental headquarters and drone bases burn. Long-range strikes inside Russia damage factories and refiners in pursuit of longer-term economic impact.

Turning point

Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who has fought for Ukraine, identified last year's battle for Pokrovsk as a turning point. Russian forces finally captured the fortress city in December after a costly 18-month effort. "Pokrovsk is where Putin smashed his teeth," Pinner wrote.

But the battle didn't occur in a vacuum. Since last summer, Ukrainian drone teams have been systematically targeting Russian radars, surface-to-air missile batteries and mobile air defense systems all along the 1,200-km gray zone.

The strikes on Russian air defenses—at least 492 of them between June and early March—are “collaps[ing] the layered defensive architecture that the Russian integrated air defense doctrine depends upon to function,” according to an in-depth investigation by Tochnyi.info.

Explore further

More Ukrainian drones are hitting Russian supply lines. The hardened targets are fine.

Destroying the right air defenses faster than the Russians can replace them has the effect of “facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory,” Tochnyi.info explained.

It seems those strikes are in turn gradually eroding the Russians' fighting strength. “We are methodically destroying the key elements of the enemy’s military infrastructure," stated Yevhen Khmara, the head of Ukraine's state security service.

No one pretends the drone campaign will bring a swift end to Russia's wider war on Ukraine. It is, at best, a slow strategic effort that could gradually tilt the battlefield back in Ukraine's favor.

The Russians may still advance in the short and medium term. They may even advance a lot when and where local conditions favor Russia's larger front-line force.

But that doesn't necessarily mean Russia is winning.

Explore further

Ukraine’s new B-2 drone is a mystery. Its kills aren’t.

Boiling oil flowed into the streets of Tuapse this week. A Ukrainian drone strike on 28 April, the third in less than two weeks, reignited fires that had been burning since 16 April at one of Russia's top ten refineries, the only major facility on its Black Sea coast.

Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev ordered the evacuation of residents in the area. More than 300 emergency personnel were deployed. Black rain has been falling on the city since the second strike on 20 April. An oil slick of around 10,000 square meters spread across the Black Sea after the first.

The smoke plume from Tuapse is visible from Krasnaya Polyana, around 100 kilometers down the coast.

That's the ski resort built for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Krasnaya Polyana means "Red Glade" in Russian. The name has nothing to do with snow.

Forgotten genocide on Russia's Black Sea coast

On 21 May 1864, Russian forces held a victory parade at a place the Adyghe people called Kbaada. The Russian Empire had been at war in the Caucasus for a hundred years. The parade marked the end. Approximately 20,000 Adyghe, mostly from the Ubykh tribe, had made a final stand there against around 250,000 Russian troops, according to Ukrainian historians who marked the date this year.

The Russians renamed the site Krasnaya Polyana. By "red," they meant blood.

The Adyghe, called Circassians by their neighbors and on European maps from the 16th century onward, had lived along the Black Sea coast and in the Caucasus mountains since at least the 6th century. They had their own laws, an elaborate culture, and one of the most complex languages in the world. By the time Russia's southern conquest reached them in the late 18th century, they numbered in the millions.

By 1864, ninety percent of them were gone.

What General Velyaminov did

The town now called Tuapse was founded in 1838 as a Russian fort named Velyaminovskoye, after General Alexei Velyaminov, who had proposed what Russian military historians call "a new strategy for the conquest of the Caucasus." The strategy was attrition. Russian forces destroyed villages, burned crops, and poisoned wells to engineer famine. They shelled Adyghe settlements with artillery from the sea.

Velyaminov's protégé, General Grigory Zass, took the work further. He paid his soldiers for the severed heads of Circassians. The heads were boiled in cauldrons in his camp, and the cleaned skulls were sent to the Russian Academy of Sciences to the Kunstkamera, Russia's first museum, in St. Petersburg, and to anatomical collections in European universities.

Fatima Tlisova, an ethnic Circassian journalist who has worked at Voice of America, has written about her family's oral history of the conquest. Russian troops attacked villages at night, hoping to catch people asleep. Often, the villagers escaped only because their animals raised the alarm first. Later, the survivors understood why: the Russian columns moved with carts of severed body parts, and the smell carried ahead of them.

Expulsion

After the surrender at Kbaada in 1864, the Russian Empire deported the surviving Adyghe. They were Muslims; the destination was the Ottoman Empire. The Russian term for the operation was the same one used for routine forced relocations: pereselenie. The Circassians have their own word for exile—muhajirstvo.

Tens of thousands were held in camps along the Black Sea coast at the ports of Sochi and Sukhumi. They lived on bare ground without sufficient food, water, or shelter. Typhus killed many of them before the ships arrived. To board, they had to pay. Ships built for 100 passengers carried 300 to 400. Many drowned from suffocation or starvation in transit. Many ships sank in Black Sea storms.

Estimates of the dead and expelled run from 1.2 million to 2.8 million people, between ninety and ninety-seven percent of the Circassian population. The largest Circassian diaspora today lives in Türkiye. Their language is endangered. Approximately 700,000 to 800,000 Circassians remain in the Caucasus, divided among three small Russian republics: Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Olympic Village

For Vladimir Putin, the 2014 Winter Olympics were a prestige project. Russia spent more than $50 billion on them, the most expensive Games ever held. The Olympic mountain cluster, where the alpine and sliding events took place, was built at Krasnaya Polyana. Circassian activists from across the diaspora petitioned the International Olympic Committee, asking that the Games not be held on the burial site of the people they had erased. The IOC declined to intervene.

The opening ceremony took place on 7 February 2014. Eleven days later, the Maidan revolution in Kyiv reached its bloody climax. Within two weeks, Russian forces, many of them shifted south through the same Black Sea coast that had once held the Circassian deportation camps, were occupying Crimea.

What Ukraine recognized

On 9 January 2025, Ukraine's parliament voted to recognize the Circassian genocide. The resolution passed 232 to zero, with no abstentions. Ukraine became the second country in the world to do so, after Georgia in 2011.

Explore further

Ukraine Parliament condemns Russian Empire’s Circassian genocide that killed and exiled 90% of population

The resolution names the perpetrator (the Russian Empire), the victims (the Adyghe people), and the period (1763 to 1864). It calls on Russia to recognize the crime and apologize. It calls on other countries to do the same. It affirms the right of Circassians to return to their lands and to self-determination. It instructs Ukrainian institutions to teach history.

The Ukrainian co-author of the resolution, MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, framed it as part of a broader project: condemning what he called Russia's colonial policy across centuries and across name changes—Muscovite, imperial, Soviet, post-Soviet. Ukraine had previously recognized the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as occupied by Russia in 2022 and the Ingush right to self-determination in 2024. The Circassian resolution sits in that sequence.

The International Circassian Association, the Moscow-recognized body operating in Russia, condemned the recognition. The Association said the Circassian people had no need of such recognition from "illegitimate Ukrainian authorities." Circassian organizations in the diaspora—in Turkiye, Syria, Jordan, the United States—welcomed it.

Why this matters now

The Russian state's response to Tuapse this week has followed a pattern. The first strike on 16 April was reported as an industrial accident. The black rain was attributed to local factory emissions. The oil slick was acknowledged only after satellite images were already circulating. After the third strike on 28 April, Putin commented for the first time, and only to assure Russians that the situation was under control. A journalist from the independent Russian outlet Kedr, reporting on pollution caused by the strikes, was briefly detained by police in Tuapse this week.

Erasure is the through-line. The 19th-century version was conducted with artillery and mass deportation. The 21st-century version is conducted with denial, censorship, and, in Ukraine since 2022, with the same tactics Russian forces used in the Caucasus: the destruction of food stores, the deliberate creation of conditions designed to make a population leave or die, the deportation of children to the imperial center for re-education. The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has documented the pattern.

Most Western readers have never heard the word Circassian. The reason is not an accident. Russia spent 160 years removing the people, the language, the maps, the memory, and the bones, and then put a ski resort on top of the burial ground.

The smoke from Tuapse this week was visible from there.

Yet another medium-range attack drone has joined Ukraine's escalating campaign targeting Russian logistics in the critical zone stretching from the contested gray zone as far back as 200 km.

Outnumbered Ukrainian forces use the middle-strike drones to degrade Russian regiments before they reach the front—hitting trains, fuel, and air defense up to 200 km deep. The Zozulia middle-strike drone pushes that reach to 1,100 km, but its 50-kg warhead is the ceiling on what the whole campaign can achieve: the drones lack explosive firepower.

Zozulia isn't exactly new: it first broke cover last fall. But its role in the counterlogistics campaign might be new. The 422nd Luftwaffe Regiment, part of the Ukrainian ground forces' 17th Corps, recently circulated images of its Zozulias in action.

In just the last week or so, Zozulias have ranged across southern Ukraine, striking Russian bases, trains rocket launchers and even a tugboat and a cargo ship. Together with Ukraine's FP-1, FP-2 and B-2 drones, the Zozulias are fraying Russian supply lines and the air defenses protecting them, and thus degrading front-line regiments before they can roll or march into battle.

Explore further

Ukraine’s new B-2 drone is a mystery. Its kills aren’t.

The 170-kg, propeller-driven Zozulia is broadly similar to the more ubiquitous FP-2, although the FP-2 has a rear-mounted "pusher" propeller and the Zozulia's propeller is mounted on its nose. Both the FP-2 and the Zozulia share a similar display optimized for direct control by a remote operator, although both types also have satellite and unjammable inertial systems for navigation.

The big different between the types is their range and payload. The FP-2 flies around 200 km with a 100-kg warhead. The Zozulia flies as far as 1,100 km with a much smaller 50-kg warhead. The Zozulia gets much of its range from the extra fuel tanks in its wings, an innovation FP-2-maker Fire Point is adding to its own middle-strike drones.

Tiny warhead

If there's a problem with the Zozulia, it's the tiny warhead. Ukrainian industry has quickly developed a dizzying array of attack drones, including models with impressive range like the Zozulia possesses. But the fuel load necessary for such long range squeezes the explosive payload to the point that the farthest-flying Ukrainian drones usually carry warheads weighing just tens of kilograms.

While Ukrainian drones are striking more targets across occupied Ukraine and deep inside Russia, especially in the logistical zone, they struggle to inflict lasting damage. Their warheads are simply too small.

The FP-2 partially addresses the problem. With its 100-kg warhead, it’s among the hardest-hitting middle-range drones.

But even the FP-2 really only works against fairly thin-skinned targets: unreinforced hangars, commercial-style storage tanks and residential buildings doubling as front-line bases, for example. It’s not unusual for the Ukrainians to hit even these relatively flimsy targets with several FP-2s in order to ensure their destruction.

Truly hardened targets brush off FP-2 strikes. When Ukrainian special forces targeted a Russian missile complex in occupied Crimea on or just before Tuesday, the video feeds from the attacking FP-2s depicted fireballs and flames on and around the presumably concrete-and-steel bunkers reportedly sheltering unused Iskander ballistic missiles. The videos didn't clearly depict any serious damage.

If the FP-2 can't bust a Russian missile bunker, the Zozulia stands no chance of inflicting any meaningful damage on a similar target. The Zozulia is helping intensify Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets in the logistical zone. But only certain types of targets.

The toughest Russian facilities are all but impervious to drone strikes. They're not impervious to strikes by Ukraine's much heavier and faster cruise missiles. But where Ukrainian forces launch thousands of middle-range attack drones every month, they launch only a handful of the much pricier, much heavier cruise missiles.

¹ The Zozulia is capable of 1,100 km flights at full warhead, or up to 2,100 km at reduced payload, but the 422nd Battalion of Unmanned Systems is currently deploying it in the middle-strike role against Russian logistics within ~200 km of the gray zone.
² The Trembita is a pulsejet-powered cruise missile in the V-1 lineage, designed as a cheap saturation and decoy weapon to exhaust Russian air defenses—not a precision strike platform. Roughly $3,000–$4,000 per unit.

Explore further

Critics said Ukraine was losing the mid-range drone war. Russia’s burning trucks disagree.

The town of Chasiv Yar, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, blocks the path to the city of Kostiantynivka, 7 km to the west.

Kostiantynivka blocks the path to the city of Kramatorsk, 15 km to the north.

Kramatorsk and neighboring Sloviansk are the last big free cities in Donetsk Oblast. Russia has spent two years trying to break through Chasiv Yar to reach them. So far, it hasn't.

And that's why Chasiv Yar—what's left of it after years of fighting—matters. After two days of failed mechanized assaults, the Russians' plans for getting around Ukrainian defenders clinging to the western outskirts, in order to then drive on Kostiantynivka, are coming into focus.

"Russians have several options they will probably try to exploit," mapper and observer Vitaly wrote. The easiest for the Russians, they added, may be to infiltrate past the battered Ukrainian defenders of Chasiv Yar and into Novodmytrivka, a village just east of Kostiantynivka.

If enough Russian troops can entrench in Novodmytrivka, they could get access to the H20 road leading north from Kostiantynivka to Kramatorsk. As a bonus, Vitaly pointed out, a Russian occupation of Novodmytrivka would "cut off" Chasiv Yar from Ukrainian reinforcements and bottle up any Ukrainian defenders left behind.

The Russian plans are coming into focus because they're already underway. The Russian push toward Novodmytrivka has begun, according to Ukrainian military observer Kostiantyn Mashovets. He and other observers and analysts have noted "ongoing attempts by Russian troops to seize Novodmytrivka," according to the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team.

Novodmytrivka holds for now, largely because Ukrainian positions in and around Chasiv Yar hold. Two days in a row starting 18 April, the Russian 70th Motor Rifle Division attacked Ukrainian 24th Mechanized Brigade holding positions in western Chasiv Yar. Two days in a row, the Ukrainian brigade fought back with drones, artillery and infantry.

"The enemy achieved no success," the Ukrainian brigade reported.

The Russians' 18 April attack involved one tank, five infantry fighting vehicles, 10 motorcycles and some all-terrain vehicles. The 24th Mechanized Brigade logged hits on several vehicles, bikes and ATVs. The Sunday assault group was similar in composition. It met the same fate as the Saturday group.

"The attack was repelled," the 24th Mechanized Brigade reported. "Enemy armored vehicles, transport and assault troops were destroyed."

Vehicles failed. Foot soldiers may not.

The two days of failed assaults were a costly setback for the Russians, but don't expect them to give up. "The Russians maintain a high level of staffing in their units located near" Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian drone operator and analyst Kriegsforscher noted. "Russian forces will likely increase their activity in this direction with armored vehicles."

But vehicles aren't the biggest threat. The Ukrainians' greatest problem is the same problem they have everywhere along the 1,200-km front line, Vitaly stressed. Ukrainian defenses are optimized for detecting and defeating Russian mechanized columns. The same defenses don't work as well when the Russians send in small groups of infantry on foot or on motorcycles.

Explore further

Russia’s 1950s tanks are massing for Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian drones are killing them in their sheds.

Widely spread Ukrainian forces can detect a big, noisy mechanized assault and halt it with drones and artillery. But the same Ukrainian forces are spread too thin to detect and block every small group of Russian infiltrators—especially as Russian bombs rain down. A "sparse and suppressed defense with gaps in drone surveillance ... allows the enemy to slip into the gaps," Vitaly explained.

Infantry infiltration is how Russian forces ultimately captured the city of Pokrovsk and neighboring Myrnohrad late last year, pushing Russians closer to Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk from the west.

Infiltration may be how they finally push past Chasiv Yar—and pressure those same cities from the east.

We don't know much about Ukraine's newest attack drone aside from its name: the B-2. We do know what the "middle-strike" B-2 is doing. (Some sources call the B-2 the "V-2.")

It's helping a growing array of Ukrainian drone units strike Russian bases, supply convoys and air defenses in the middle zone stretching as far as 200 km behind the disputed gray zone threading 1,200 km from northern Ukraine to southern Ukraine.

The B-2 broke cover recently, when the new 13th Detachment—a drone unit formed around veteran drone operators from the 414th Brigade—circulated footage of its work.

The footage depicts the B-2s from the drones' points of view as they strike four Russian air defense systems in one night on or just before 23 April: three Tor-M2s and an Osa system. The 13th Detachment hunted down the mobile surface-to-air missile systems in occupied Ukraine as well as in Russia's Bryansk Oblast, just across the border.

The hits on Russian SAM vehicles are a clear indicator that the B-2s are supporting Ukraine's slow-burn effort to suppress Russian air defenses across occupied territories and adjacent Russian oblasts.

The suppression campaign—at least 492 drone strikes on Russian air defenses between June 2025 and early March 2026—is clearing the way for Ukraine's drone teams and fighter regiments to target Russian headquarters, drone teams, supply convoys and, yes, any surviving air defenses in the middle zone.

Drones suppress Russian air defenses, enabling manned and unmanned aircraft to strike harder and more frequently, further degrading those air defenses in the process. It's a beneficial cycle for Ukrainian forces—and a death spiral for Russian forces.

Destroying air defense systems faster than the Russians can replace them has the effect of "facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory," Tochnyi.info explained in a recent study.

Drones and comms

The suppression campaign is only as impactful as the middle-strike drones are effective. There are many different types, including the Hornet, the HF-1 and HF-2, the RAM-2X, and Bulava. They tend to be either first-person-view models that are directly steered by a remote operator, or autonomous models that can select and strike their own targets. Some models combine direct operator control with autonomous targeting assistance.

Some long-range drones support the mid-range suppression effort, in particular the FP-2. With its 158-kg warhead, the FP-2 is an outlier. Most of the middle-strike drones strike with much smaller warheads weighing just 5 kg or so.

Inasmuch as many of the drones rely on a low-lag radio link to their operators, the suppression campaign is also a connectivity campaign. Quietly and without many people noticing, Ukrainian forces have established overlapping communications networks across the gray zone and the middle zone behind it. The comms nets include line-of-sight radios, Starlink satellite terminals and mesh radio nets formed by many interconnected drones.

Explore further

Critics said Ukraine was losing the mid-range drone war. Russia’s burning trucks disagree.

It's unclear whether the B-2 navigates by GPS or by some self-contained inertial or terrain-following system (which matches the landscape below the drone to a pre-installed digital map). It's evident, from footage of air defense strikes, that the drone can be directly steered by a remote operator for maximum precision in the seconds before impact.

That precision makes the B-2 effective for strikes on mobile targets such as those Tor-M2s and that Osa. One more arrow in the quiver of an expanding drone army, the B-2 is helping to clear the air space over the war zone for follow-on drone, missile and bombing raids on Russian headquarters, drone teams, supply lines and, yes, any surviving air defenses.

Each successful strike is enabled by the strikes that preceded it.

The head of Ukraine's Office of the President, Kyrylo Budanov, has listed the Ukrainian weapons Ukraine has outgrown but could still suit foreign buyers — older FPV drones, sea drones, bombers, long-range UAVs from 2022-2023, and armored vehicles, in an NV interview at a defense conference on 26 April.

"We ourselves don't have enough"

Ukraine's arms exports remain "let's say inactive" today, Budanov noted, with the country still short of weapons in a "hot phase" of ongoing full-scale war. Opening free arms sales abroad would be wrong, he argued — strange for Ukraine, unclear to its foreign partners, and morally unjustifiable while Ukrainians fight.

"It would be incomprehensible to neither us nor foreign partners on whom we depend in many ways," Budanov said.

But pockets of overproduction have begun appearing, the head of the Office of the President added. 

"Pointwise, I am sure that work can be started in this regard," he said.

Explore further

“A surprise for the enemy”: Budanov says the next stage of warfare will be defined by autonomy as drone numbers hit their ceiling

The risk of high-tech leaking to Russia through such exports is a real concern, Budanov noted. Ukraine itself has procured foreign weapons through such routes many times.

What Ukraine can actually sell

Budanov named several categories where production exceeds front-line need:

• Sea drones — "we definitely produce more of them than we use," he said.
• Older FPV drones — saturation of Russian electronic warfare has rendered them unable to take off at the front. "They simply don't fly anymore," Budanov said. Bomber drones fall in the same category.
• Long-range UAVs from 2022 and 2023 — once Ukraine's flagship deep-strike capability, now too short-ranged to reach Russian targets. "They simply won't reach anywhere," Budanov said. For Asia and Africa, he added, such drones "are still suitable."
• Armored vehicles — combat vehicles with two-axle steering for off-road performance. Ukraine produces these "quite a lot," Budanov said, with the volumes "significantly larger than what we can afford" for ourselves.

Explore further

A boat with no crew just shot down a Shahed. Ukraine says it’s a world first

A narrowing export window

The bigger picture is that Ukraine's exports were largely suspended after 2022 and were only recently unblocked. Bureaucratic friction, intellectual property concerns, and the threat of sabotage have left €150 billion in potential European partnerships stuck in limbo awaiting approval. UK Armed Forces Minister Al Carns warned earlier this month that Ukraine is running out of time to export, with global rivals catching up.

Kyiv has been working to widen the channel. The Defense City legal regime, launched in January, cuts the time for export license reviews from 90 to 15 days for participating companies. Ukrainian firms are also moving production abroad.

11 countries have signaled interest in Ukrainian air-defense drone tech, with three Gulf states already signed up to 10-year deals. Budanov also said Ukrainian drone makers need to focus next on artificial intelligence and a domestic command-and-control architecture.

One of Ukraine's most unusual and most efficient defenses against Russian Shahed attack drones—an aging Antonov An-28 light transport plane armed with side-firing gun—is about to become a lot more capable with the addition of air-to-air interceptor drones.

The An-28 crew has been testing at least two different types of interceptor: the SkyFall P1-Sun and the Wild Hornet Sting. Both drones launch from a simple rack attached to the starboard wing of the twin-engine An-28. After launch, operators aboard the transport steer the interceptors toward nearby Shaheds.

The aim: to slam into the Russian drones with a small explosive payload.

Video of the tests appeared online on Thursday. One observer, Timur Fatkullin, claimed the An-28 has already used the P1-Sun in combat. "You could call it a cheap air-to-air missile," Fatkullin explained.

The 1980s-vintage An-28 isn't normally associated with an air defense role. But late last year, some enterprising Ukrainian volunteers armed one of the transports with a 7.62-mm minigun firing from the transport's open side hatch.

Stable and cheap to operate, the An-28 is an excellent gunnery platform. In the roughly six months since the armed An-28 first appeared in the sky over Ukraine, its crew has shot down more than 220 Shaheds, Fatkullin claimed.

Four problems, one airplane

The tandem solves four problems that neither ground-launched drone interceptors nor an An-28 with a gunner could solve alone.

First, a minigun is effective only as far as the gunner can aim and see. Interceptors such as the P1-Sun and Sting can cruise for tens of kilometers. Operators aboard the An-28, connected to their drones via radio, see what the drones see through forward-looking cameras.

Launching from altitude also solves a battery and speed problem. Ground-launched interceptors burn significant power climbing to cruise speed. An air-launched drone inherits starts the chase already at altitude, already moving at roughly 300 km/hr, and with its battery untouched.

Normally cruising slower than 200 km/hr, the interceptors can accelerate to around twice that speed in order to overtake and strike Shaheds that hum along at 185 km/hr for the Shahed-136s at 185 km/hr and catch jet-powered Geran variants at their 300–350 km/hr cruise. 

Weather is the third factor. Ground-launched drones are exposed to cloud cover that can blind their operators; an An-28 can climb above it. "The An-28 will allow drones to operate in zero visibility," Fatkullin wrote.

The fourth is radio range. Line-of-sight radio scales with altitude. An operator a few thousand feet up can guide interceptors much farther than a ground team can.

Hundreds of Shaheds

Interceptor drones costing around $3,000 apiece aren't the cheapest way to down $50,000 Shaheds—that honorific belongs to ground-based mobile gun vehicles such as the German-made Gepard—but they're still much more cost-effective than the best Western-made surface-to-air missiles, which can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars apiece.

The cost curve is now driving scale. Wild Hornets produces more than 10,000 Sting interceptors per month. Ukraine's military took delivery of roughly 40,000 interceptor drones in January 2026 alone, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine could scale that to 2,000 a day with sufficient funding. SkyFall's P1-Sun has destroyed more than 3,000 Shahed-type drones since the start of 2026, according to Hanna Hvozdiar, an adviser to Fedorov.

The Russians routinely launch hundreds of Shaheds at a time at Ukrainian cities and power plants, usually at a rate of once or twice a week. Normally just 10% of the 200-kg drones get through Ukrainian defenses, but that 10% is enough to inflict widespread damage.

The Russians kept scaling the Shahed attacks. Several hundred were launched a month while supplies came from Iran. But domestic production starting at the Alabuga factory, a second factory at Kupol, and the manufacturing of Gerbera decoys have ramped up attack numbers to thousands monthly. Ukrainian air defenses caught 99% of the drones by late 2024—but have struggled to keep up as monthly launches climbed past 6,000.

The imperative, for Ukrainian air defenders, has been to scale up defenses against the Shaheds without spending so much money that the defenses ultimately become unaffordable. Inexpensive interceptor drones, which Ukrainian factories churn out by the thousands every month, have helped the defenders balance capability versus cost.

And their numbers are rising. Deborah Fairlamb of Green Flag Ventures puts the broader pattern this way: one in three Russian aerial targets is now brought down by an interceptor drone rather than a missile.

Explore further

Critics said Ukraine was losing the mid-range drone war. Russia’s burning trucks disagree.

Ukrainian forces deploy an array of aircraft for anti-Shahed duty, including old training planes and at least one modified cropduster. There's a good chance many of them could get racks for interceptor drones. "This isn’t a one-off—there are already several projects where Sting is deployed from different platforms, both maritime and airborne," Wild Hornets stated.

The maritime version was demonstrated on 19 April, when Ukraine's 412th Nemesis Brigade launched a Sting from an unmanned surface vessel and intercepted a Russian Shahed over the Black Sea—a world first for naval-launched drone interception.

The Ukrainians are also getting better at striking Shahed-type drones at a longer range. On 4 April, a pilot from Ukraine's Bulava unit downed two Shaheds with a single Sting interceptor from 500 kilometers away, using Wild Hornets' HORNET VISION Ctrl remote-control system. By 23 April, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov reported that pilots were guiding interceptors from up to 2,000 kilometers away—including from outside the country entirely.

Russia is adapting too. Jet-propelled Shahed variants now cruise at 300–350 km/hr and can burst to 500–600 km/hr — still faster than any interceptor Ukraine currently fields. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called the jet variants the most urgent unsolved problem; Brave1 is channeling grants toward interceptors capable of exceeding 450 km/hr.

Explore further

Ukrainian pilots now down Shaheds thousands of kilometers away – including from other countries

Modern problems require modern solutions. If shooting down cheap Russian Shaheds with air-to-air missiles from jets is not cost-effective, why not replace MiGs and F-16s with An-28 turboprop transport planes and missiles with interceptor drones?

Ukrainian interceptor producer SkyFall posted an Instagram video showing a rare glimpse of how this works. A civilian-designed An-28 plane was modified with three hardpoints on each wing, which could fit SkyFall's cheekily-named P1-SUN interceptor. The crews also tested the American Merops interceptor drones from this platform.

Shaheds are relatively slow-moving targets, letting the plane crews spot them from the sky, then launch the drones, which onboard pilots use to intercept the Russian terror weapons. 

“Visual on target, request permission to engage,” a Ukrainian crew member says in the video. A few moments later, permission is granted. The interceptor detaches from the wing and speeds off towards the Russian attack drone. 

"I'm on his tail. Coming up on target. Come on, work, you beauty,” the interceptor pilot reports, as the characteristic triangular shape of the Shahed looms in the camera view. The P1-SUN sidles up behind it before both it and the target burst into a midair fireball. 

“Yes! Detonation! Ha ha!” 

The celebration doesn’t last longer than a second. There are other Shaheds around them to destroy. The crews get to work. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Timur Fatkullin (@aero.tim)

Cheap and effective 

Ukraine officially started using light aircraft to fight Shaheds in 2025. These are often converted civilian planes that are much cheaper to operate than dedicated fighter jets, which are often employed to bring down Russian cruise missiles, among many other combat assignments. 

The An-28 is a short-range airliner, whose maiden flight was in 1969. Pressed into Ukrainian military service, the venerable plane has been downing Shaheds with machine guns and other weapons. In February, French journalists from TF1 Info reported that some of the crews are civilian volunteers.

The combination of this plane with Ukraine’s rapidly expanding interceptor use was, perhaps, a no-brainer.

Explore further

Ukraine’s 59-kill cargo plane proves low-tech can beat high-tech

"The drone interceptor doesn't have to waste energy to get off the ground, and from up there, you can see all the Shaheds," said Kostyantyn Kryvolap, a former aviation test engineer at the Antonov Design Bureau, which created the An-28. 

Ukraine’s shootdown rate of Russian air attacks has been climbing consistently since December, even as Russia sends unprecedented numbers of drones and missiles, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.

The MoD posted an interception success rate of 89.9% for March, compared to 85.6% in February, 82.5% in January, and 80.2% in December. That is a 9.7 percentage point increase in three months. Kyiv’s goal is to destroy at least 95% of all incoming weapons.

Explore further

A low-tech transport plane firing high-tech interceptor drones is Ukraine’s newest Shahed-hunter

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Timur Fatkullin (@aero.tim)

Ukraine is surging more explosive drones into Russia's vulnerable logistical zone, aiming to weaken Russian regiments before the regiments can attack.

At least two Ukrainian units, the 12th Azov Brigade and the 20th Unmanned Systems Brigade, are deploying the new SETH mid-range drone for these raids in the logistical zone, which stretches from around 10 km to around 200 km behind the disputed gray zone where most of the direct ground combat takes place.

Recent video montages from the two Ukrainian units depict SETH strikes on Russian trucks, vans and motorcycles. "We cut off the enemy's logistics, we destroy them before they even reach the front line," the 20th Unmanned Systems Brigade stated.

mini-shahed strikes in the russian rear around Lysychansk-Siverskodonetskhttps://t.co/68zrIXuMLc pic.twitter.com/NTl8h2gHI5

— imi (m) (@moklasen) April 19, 2026

The SETH is a "pusher" design with a rear-mounted propeller and 1.5-meter wingspan. It hauls a 3-kg warhead as far as 40 km under satellite navigation. The drone spots targets such as trucks or trains using an AI-assisted camera. A remote operator approves the target before the drone barrels in.

A single SETH reportedly cost several hundred thousand dollars as recently as a year ago, potentially making it much more expensive than the other Ukrainian attack drones in its class. The Fire Point FP-2, which Ukrainian drone forces have used to hit Russian air bases in Crimea, reportedly costs around $50,000 per unit. The Swift Beat Hornet, built by a US company owned by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is supplied to Ukraine at cost price under a 2025 memorandum.

Drones tend to come down in cost as the production rate increases, however. And Ukrainian production of mid- and long-range drones is increasing a lot, to a new high of 7,000 copies in March 2026. Robert Brovdi, call sign "Magyar," the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, recently announced four more USF brigades would re-equip with mid- and long-range drones.

Explore further

Contents

• Donetsk was Russia’s safe rear. Now AI drones hunt its supply trucks.
  1. Fast drone expansion
     • Ukraine tips drone war in its favor
     • Russian air defenses are collapsing. Now Ukrainian warplanes can hit harder.

Donetsk was Russia’s safe rear. Now AI drones hunt its supply trucks.

Fast drone expansion

The fast expansion of Ukraine's mid-range strike campaign represents a profound reversal. Just a few months ago, Ryan O'Leary, an American who once led a volunteer company fighting for Ukraine, worried that Ukrainian leaders were effectively handing Russia the drone advantage in the logistical zone—by focusing too much on the shortest- and longest-range drones while neglecting the mid-range ones.

Short-range first-person-view drones, patrolling the gray zone, can inflict heavy casualties on Russian infantry. But heavy infantry losses may not mean much to the Kremlin, which continues to recruit enough fresh troops to replace combat losses.

"Ukrainian drones are still optimized for destroying infantry, not for changing sectors," O'Leary wrote in a since-deleted post. "This creates cool videos, but delivers weak strategic effect."

Explore further

Ukraine tips drone war in its favor

"The drone war is not about the number of killed today," O'Leary added. "It is about controlling the space tomorrow. Ownership of the depth means control of movement, logistics, [surveillance], communication and decisions in the sector, not just in the trench."

Ukrainian commanders clearly shared O'Leary's concern. Efforts were already underway to pivot drone units to mid-range strikes.

By this spring, these efforts were explosively evident as more FP-2s, Hornets and SETHs surged into the logistical zone—and more Russian trucks, trains, headquarters and air defenses went up in flames. A mid-March Institute for the Study of War assessment found monthly Ukrainian mid-range strikes had quadrupled since November 2025.

The mid-range strikes on logistical targets are only as effective as Russia's air defenses are ineffective. A mid-range drone might spend several minutes in the air at an altitude that could make it an easy target for an intact air defense network.

But Russia's air defense is not intact. Relentless Ukrainian drone strikes on radars, surface-to-air missile launchers and mobile guns—at least 492 of them between June 2025 and early March—are "facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory," Tochnyi.info explained in a recent report.

The Ukrainian strikes on Russian air defenses continue in parallel with the expansion of the mid-range strikes on logistical targets. Just how much damage FP-2s, Hornets and SETHs can inflict on Russian logistics may depend on how many more Russian air defenses the Ukrainians can knock out.

The impact on Russia's spring offensive, which is just starting in some sectors, may be hard to measure. But if the offensive falters without the Russians capturing much new ground, it may be thanks to the mid-range drone strikes that sapped the Russians' combat power before they could bring that combat power to bear in the gray zone.

Explore further

Russian air defenses are collapsing. Now Ukrainian warplanes can hit harder.

mini-shahed strikes in the russian rear around Lysychansk-Siverskodonetskhttps://t.co/68zrIXuMLc pic.twitter.com/NTl8h2gHI5

— imi (m) (@moklasen) April 19, 2026

Dialing up the pressure on Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian 225th Assault Regiment is flying tiny explosive drones into buildings in search of Russian armored vehicles.

The goal: to knock out the vehicles before the Russians can deploy them for a fresh push toward Zaporizhzhia city, 75 km to the west of the disputed gray zone threading south from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast through Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

The vehicles the Ukrainian drones operators are finding and destroying in their indoor shelters are some of the oldest and weirdest in Russia's 50-month wider war on Ukraine. Blasting awkwardly up-armored T-55 tanks from the 1950s, the Ukrainians are discovering just how poorly equipped some of the Russian regiments and brigades in the southeast actually are.

That the Russian 5th and 36th Combined Arms Armies in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts ride in geriatric T-55s among other aged vehicles doesn't mean the CAAs—part of the Eastern Group of Forces—can't advance toward Zaporizhzhia. It does mean they may struggle. Especially given the increasing density of Ukrainian drones and other defenses in the area.

A recent montage of first-person-view drone strikes, circulated by the 225th Assault Regiment, depicts regimental FPV pilots deftly maneuvering through narrow gaps between the walls and roofs of sheds, garages and warehouses somewhere in the regiment's sector, which stretches between the Ukrainian base in Verkhnia Tersa and the Russian base in Zelene, 8 km to the east. The logistical hub of Huliaipole, captured by the Russians back in December, lies a few kilometers to the south.

Bad armor

In the montage, the drone operators find and strike at least three T-55s with add-on anti-drone armor. Not good add-on anti-drone armor, the likes of which you can see on the heavily up-armored T-72 "giga turtle" tanks belonging to the Russian 4th Motor Rifle Brigade, which fights around the Ukrainian stronghold of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Where the T-72 giga turtles boast layers of blast-absorbing sheet metal buttressed by drone-blocking spines, at least one of the 35-ton, four-person T-55s the 225th Assault Regiment blew up sported a layer of discarded ammunition canisters that almost certainly offer very little protection from an FPV drone. Especially one with a shaped-charge warhead that can punch right through the outermost layer of armor on most vehicles.

Lackluster equipment isn't the only thing holding back the 5th and 36th CAAs in southeastern Ukraine. In early February, Elon Musk's Starlink bricked thousands of stolen or smuggled satellite communications terminals that Russian forces relied on for front-line command and control. Ukrainian forces in the southeast took advantage of the ensuing chaos, and counterattacked along a 30-km front between Huliaipole in the south and Ternove in the north.

Explore further

Ukraine lost 500 American battle taxis. Now it’s building a tougher one.

The Russians fell back. In a heady two months, Ukrainian troops liberated a couple of hundred square kilometers of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. As they scrambled to restore their communications, the Russians also rushed a clutch of marine brigades and other reinforcements to the area.

Today "the Huliaipole direction remains one of the most challenging for the Armed Forces of Ukraine," Ukrainian drone operator and analyst Kriegsforscher reported. "The Russians have deployed three naval infantry divisions (brigade strength) to this area, significantly enhancing the offensive capabilities of the East[ern] Group of Forces. The situation will likely deteriorate in the future, including an increase in assaults with armor."

The 225th Assault Regiment and adjacent Ukrainian units aren't just sitting around waiting for the coming Russian offensive. They're hunting down that Russian armor before it can roll into action. Armor that includes some very old, weirdly up-armored T-55s.

Ukrainian company Tencore and French company Shark Robotics will build Unmanned Ground Vehicles together, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos announced at the Ukraine Business Summit on 22 April.

Tencore confirmed the joint venture, created under the aegis of the Build with Ukraine initiative, which aims to boost Ukraine's defense industry by creating partnerships and joint production lines abroad.

“In Ukraine, we create solutions under pressure and in real conditions. Together with Shark Robotics, we combine combat robotics and robotics for civil protection,” CEO Maksim Vasylchenko posted on social media. “It is this complementarity that makes our partnership strong.”

The role of UGVs in the full-scale invasion has soared recently, with production climbing by 488% in 2025, the Kyiv School of Economics estimated. 

In Ukraine, this segment of the industry is still quite young and has yet to reach its full potential, worth just $252 million in 2025. Still, the UGV market is “highly diversified” by manufacturer, with room for producers to enter if they have good products, according to KSE.

The innovation on display appears to be attracting increasing attention from Europeans. Kos called Ukraine "central to European security and economic resilience," adding that Ukrainians are building an "Arsenal of Democracy."

Explore further

Ukraine’s top defense market segments more than doubled to .8 Billion in 2025

Tencore is known for its TerMIT system, a highly modular ground robot that’s serving with multiple Ukrainian brigades on the front lines. With a carrying capacity of 300 kilograms, it can be turned into a logistics vehicle to resupply or evacuate the wounded, it can lay mines, or mount weapons to attack enemy forces.

Shark Robotics builds several lines of firefighting robots, a logistics and transport robot, a demining robot, and remote-controlled spike strips for civil security. 

This is not Tencore’s first European joint venture this year. In February, the Ukrainian company signed an agreement with Germany’s autonomous truck producer FERNRIDE to manufacture TerMIT UGVs.

Also at the Ukraine Business Summit, Danish satellite producer GomSpace signed a deal with Ukrainian satellite producer Stetman.

Ukraine’s air defense has a serious radar shortage. This is especially a problem for so-called “smaller-scale” air defense, which includes mobile fire teams, anti-air gun platforms, and interceptor drones.

All radar systems to be produced in Ukraine this year are already bought out, an unmanned systems battalion sergeant in the 59th Assault Brigade, told NV.ua in an interview.

Air defense "seemed to be more or less leveling out with air defense drones," Sergeant Marko said. "But all these crews aren't very effective when you don't have radar."

His words echo what other sources have told Euromaidan Press in the past. The shortage may put the brakes on Ukraine’s goal to intercept 95% of all Russian weapons and place an upper ceiling on the effectiveness of new air defense teams. 

Ukrainian air defense is continually evolving to keep up with Russia’s mass drone and missile attacks, reorganizing units and relying increasingly on cheaper weapons like interceptors and other solutions, to save its expensive missiles and jets for the biggest threats. 

However, while this seems to be paying dividends, it’s also caused a surge of demand for radar systems, a trend which became evident in late 2024. Military insiders say that this issue stems from three major reasons.

1. Surging demand 
2. Lack of money and components and limited supply chains
3. Tight control on radar production due to security concerns

Demand

Part of the shortage is due to rising demand, as a result of the changes in how Ukraine’s air defense works. The country has been trying to move away from using exquisite systems on less-destructive threats, to make air defense more spread out, decentralized but well-networked. 

Interceptor drones surged in prominence over the past year, becoming more widely integrated into Ukraine’s air defense at a rapid rate. Top General Oleksandr Syrskyi said that interceptors made 6,300 sorties in February and credited these drones with destroying 70% of Russian one way attack drones over Kyiv Oblast that month.

Explore further

As Russia breaks air attack record, Ukraine’s interception rate climbs to 90%

Mobile fire teams bear a significant burden in combating strike UAVs, even cruise missiles. Troops on the ground use MANPADS, interceptor drones, autocannons and machine guns, plus other small arms. Ukraine recently allowed private air defense groups to protect civilian areas and they’re already racking up their kill count. 

All these units need short-range radar, which in Ukraine includes the RADA, the Giraffe, and the "Poltavka" systems, with typical ranges between 7 and 50 kilometers. Ukrainians also use foreign imports — according to multiple testimonials, Israeli-made radar systems are considered to have the best performance. The problem is, there aren’t enough systems to go around.

"There are very, very few of them," said Lyuba Shipovich, head of Ukrainian NGO Dignitas.  "When at the end of 2024 it became obvious that it is also cheaper to shoot down Shaheds with drones, and for this you need radar, then there were not many radar systems left."

The massive demand for detection systems to combat enemy FPVs on the front lines and in the near rear exacerbates the shortage of radar systems, according to Nazariy Barchuk, an analyst with the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation.

Supply

Part of the problem comes down to money and resources, according to a Ukrainian drone test pilot, who asked not to be identified by name for the sake of security. 

“Everything is simple, there’s not enough money, there aren’t enough components, because the demand wasn’t as high for them before,” he told Euromaidan Press.

“Scaling up production is difficult and takes a long time and China, as a component supplier, is favoring the Russians as strategic partners.” 

He added that the situation on the ground is changing faster than global supply chains can keep up. 

The other issue is one of permission. Both the manufacture and use of radar systems is tightly controlled by the military intelligence directorate (GUR), due to the sensitive data these systems provide, Shipovich said. While this is an important security consideration, it also makes scaling more difficult. 

Shipovich said that while large radar systems need to be tightly regulated, the private sector needs more leeway to produce smaller systems that can detect drones at shorter distances.

The US may have expended up to 61% of its Patriot missile arsenal during 39 days of the war in Iran, with future deliveries expected to take “years” according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

These are grim numbers for Ukraine, whose own Patriot capabilities are running empty. Patriots are Ukraine’s answer to Russia’s ballistic missile strikes — last week, Russia unleashed its largest attack in months, killing at least 19 and injuring over 100 people.  

Many other countries rely on US air defense missile systems, including Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defenses (THAADs), and they all want to get their hands on as many as possible. Gulf states have had to defend from Iranian missiles, Taiwan is preparing for an invasion by China, and European states are trying to bolster their own arsenals. 

“Diminished inventories will affect the US supply of Patriot, THAADs, and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) to Ukraine and other allies and partners that use them,” CSIS wrote.

Because the Pentagon will need to procure more for itself, “the US will compete with those countries that also want to replenish and expand inventories.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy challenged Ukrainian companies to create homegrown anti-ballistic capabilities and do so within the following year, to wean itself off this dependence. He said Kyiv is in talks with other governments to make this happen.

However, that is a lot easier said than done. First of all, Ukraine would need to create the requisite radar systems at a time when it’s struggling with shortages of much less advanced radar. The missiles themselves might cost billions to develop and millions to produce, with no guarantee of their effectiveness against modern ballistic threats.  

All while under fire from the sky and extremely tight budgets that could have been cut short if Viktor Orban had won the Hungarian presidency. 

45% to 61% spent in 39 days

Eighteen countries use the Patriot. The current missiles that the US and many others use are called the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement or PAC-3 MSE. 

According to the CSIS, the US had 2,330 of PAC-3 MSEs before the war in Iran. In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, Washington used anywhere from 1,060 to 1,430.

Up to 400 of the older PAC-2 missiles may also still be in the stockpile, according to CSIS, but the US Army no longer procures them and they are made in smaller quantities. They are also less effective against modern ballistic threats.

Each PAC-3 missile costs about $3.9 million. Until recently, the US was only making 550-600 per year, procuring half for itself and selling the rest abroad. Ukraine is a heavy user, with CSIS estimating that it may have received 600 missiles over the course of the war. 

The US Department of Defense recently signed a framework with defense contractor Lockheed Martin to raise PAC-3 MSE production to 2,000 units per year over the next 6-7 years. The agreement has yet to be funded, but should slowly alleviate these issues over the next half-decade. That does nothing for the short-term bottleneck.

The US also emptied out its inventory of THAAD munitions, using 190-290 out of a total inventory of 360. The naval Standard Missile 3 and Standard Missile 6 stockpiles also took a beating, with up to 250 out of 410 and out of 370 out of 1,160 used, respectively. 

Resupply might take years

Before more missiles can be produced, the polarized US Congress must pass an appropriation bill — especially challenging this year when a lot of procurement spending is inside a FY 2026 supplemental and a FY 2027 reconciliation bill.

“Then, there is the manufacturing lead time for the first delivery. Historically, that has been about 24 months, but as munitions orders have outstripped production capacity in recent years, lead times have stretched to 36 months or more,” CSIS wrote. 

“Production time for the entire lot is another 12 months. That is about 52 months in all—over four years.”

While the rate of both Iranian ballistic launches and the US’s use of its Patriot and THAAD munitions went down over the course of the Iran war, it took less than two months to expend half or more of Washington’s stockpiles of both. Iran is estimated to have significant missile and drone capabilities remaining should the war flare up again.

“A war against a capable peer competitor like China will consume munitions at greater rates than in this war,” CSIS wrote. “Prewar inventories were already insufficient; the levels today will constrain US operations should a future conflict arise.”

Explore further

Ukraine barters with Gulf states: Patriot missiles for anti-drone capabilities

Whenever Operation Epic Fury ends, “munitions inventories will start to recover, but restoring depleted stockpiles and then achieving the desired inventory levels will take many years.”

There was a glimmer of hope for Kyiv earlier this month when American defense contractor Raytheon signed a $3.7 billion deal to build “several hundred” older PAC-2 GEM missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot systems. However, these are less effective against modern ballistic systems than more recent missiles. 

Worse, it’s unclear when Ukraine will get them. In December, Hartpunkt reported that Germany plans to produce PAC-2 GEM-Ts on its territory with Raytheon, but the delivery date of the first 1,000 to Germany and several other European countries was listed as 2028.

French-Italian alternatives: SAMP/T

Ukraine is looking at other options, such as the French-Italian SAMP/T. Both countries have already supplied some of these systems to Ukraine

In November, Zelenskyy signed a 10-year security pact with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, opening the door for Kyiv to acquire the additional SAMP/Ts. Ukraine was reportedly eyeing the purchase of eight systems. 

The cost would likely be in the neighborhood of 3 billion euros. Denmark recently signed a deal to procure four of these systems for 1.47 billion euros, which includes missiles, training and support. 

The Aster-30 missiles used by the SAMP/T cost less than PAC-3 MSEs and there are fewer countries that use Aster-30s, both advantages for Kyiv.

However, the Aster-30s production rate is much lower. A French national defense report from December 2024 stated that the normal rate is 80-100, with a plan to ramp up to produce 300 missiles per year by 2028.

Even if all of these missiles went to Ukraine — which they won’t — it’s not nearly enough to deal with Russia’s ballistic missile production rate of over 60 per month, according to Ukraine’s intelligence agencies. 

Despite challenge, “no alternative but to try” to build Ukrainian

As such, Ukraine needs other alternatives, including Zelenskyy’s proposal to launch a domestic program. 

Some have come out with optimistic statements, including Valery Zarubin, co-founder of Ukraine’s BlueBird Tech, which makes drones, electronic warfare systems, and other products. 

“We must develop our own air defense systems and not depend on the major players in this market. I am convinced that we will soon create solutions similar to the Patriot system—but significantly cheaper,” Zarubin said in an emailed statement.

“Ukrainian engineers are currently actively seeking effective and technologically advanced solutions.”

However, creating a viable ballistic interceptor pipeline takes more than can-do engineering. Ukrainian military analysts at Defense Express write that this problem is extremely difficult, can cost billions to develop, and is fraught with pitfalls. 

The radar must track the ballistic threat's trajectory with high accuracy and frequency and endure maximum upward visibility to avoid dead zones. The missiles themselves have to be extraordinarily precise, able to maneuver quickly, and tolerate extreme forces to have a hope to intercept ballistic missiles at speeds of kilometers per second. 

Both launchers and radar must work together as a single well-oiled machine that can quickly classify threats, predict the trajectory, decide how to engage, and transmit guidance to the missile, until its homing head can acquire the target, at the bare minimum.

“And even having solved these tasks… there is no guarantee that it will work in real combat conditions, and not just on a training ground,” Defense Express wrote. 

“But now Ukraine is in such a state that there seems to be no other alternative but to try.”

Russia now holds 520 Ukrainians on politically motivated criminal charges from occupied Crimea — more than double the 238 documented at the time of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Many of them are Crimean Tatars, reports the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.

The number has grown through a year of peace talks in Geneva, Abu Dhabi, and Istanbul. Combatants have been exchanged. A handful of 2014-era civilians have trickled home. But the 520 Ukrainians Russia converted into its own "domestic criminals" through the legal fiction of its 2014 annexation are almost never on the lists.

Examples of persecution

Of those political prisoners, 277 are Crimean Tatars, and 351 are in pre-trial detention or serving sentences in penal colonies, according to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center as of 20 April 2026. In the first quarter of 2026, the occupation authorities carried out 57 arrests on the peninsula, 18 of them targeting Crimean Tatars, Zarema Bariiev from the Crimean Tatar Resource Center told Ukrinform.

Behind these figures are individual cases that follow a familiar pattern. Russia has built what the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group and Ukrainian activists have called a conveyor belt of fabricated cases against the peninsula's pro-Ukrainian residents — farmers, pensioners, Muslim believers, human rights defenders, journalists. What has changed is the scale and the silence: the cases multiply, while the diplomatic tables where Ukraine's future is being drawn have no seat for the people Russia is still arresting.

Oleh Prykhodko: the welder, who refused to look away

Oleh Prykhodko was 62 when a Russian military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced him, on 3 March 2021, to five years in a high-security colony for preparing terrorist attackshe never prepared. He is a welder from the village of Orekhovo, in the Saky region of western Crimea. He had been openly pro-Ukrainian since long before the occupation, flew a Ukrainian flag over his land, and never hid his view that Crimea belonged to Ukraine.

The case against him rested on explosives the FSB said they had found in his garage during a search. The catch: the FSB had already searched his home earlier, during previous rounds of pressure on his pro-Ukrainian activity. When Prykhodko asked the officers to search his second garage, they refused — which suggested, as his defence pointed out, that they knew there was nothing there.

Prykhodko pleaded not guilty and stated at trial that he was an ordinary man who had openly opposed the occupation of Crimea. The court convicted him anyway. An extra month was added to his sentence — officially for contempt of court over insults aimed at the two FSB officers who had fabricated the case. Then, in November 2023, a Russian court added another four-and-a-half years, based on fellow inmates' testimony that he had "promoted terrorism" and "praised Hitler" in prison cell conversations — the sort of charge, as the Memorial Human Rights Centre has warned, that can be mechanically applied to any political prisoner Russia wants to keep.

On 5 March 2026 the FSB announced a fourth criminal case against him. This one charges him with "abetting terrorist activities" and "planning to incite state treason" — based on alleged conversations with cellmates. It can carry up to life in prison. Now 67, he suffers from hearing loss and other untreated health conditions.

Emir-Usein Kuku: the human rights defender Russia keeps breaking

Emir-Usein Kuku lived in the village of Koreiz, near Yalta, with his wife Meriem and their two sons. He is a Crimean Tatar, an economist and accountant by training, and a human rights defender. After the occupation, he helped found the Crimean Contact Group on Human Rights, which monitored the growing list of Crimean Tatars abducted, disappeared, or killed on the peninsula.

In April 2015 the FSB beat him severely on his way home from work, injuring his spine. He never received proper treatment. Russian officers then approached him several times and asked him to become an informant. He refused. In February 2016 they came for him, charging him with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir — an Islamic political movement legal in Ukraine and most of the world, but which Russia's Supreme Court banned as "terrorist" in 2003. Russia applies the ban on the peninsula it occupies. The only evidence against Kuku was a recording of a kitchen conversation where the participants discussed politics, Islam, and the fate of Crimea; one of the men, his lawyer stated, was likely a planted witness.

A Russian military court sentenced him to 12 years in a maximum-security colony in November 2019. In between, he was subjected to forced psychiatric evaluation, spent almost a month in isolation at Simferopol Psychiatric Hospital No. 1, and went on a 24-day hunger strike in solidarity with filmmaker Oleh Sentsov. Russia moved him to Penal Colony No. 16 in Salavat, Bashkortostan — 2,500 kilometres from his home.

The spine never healed. Neither did the kidneys. In June 2023, Kuku was rushed to hospital with acute abdominal pain; doctors performed emergency surgery for an intestinal obstruction, Front Line Defenders reported. Three days later, against medical advice, he was sent back to the colony. He received no post-operative care, no diet guidance, and no record of what had been done to him. In February 2025 the UN Special Rapporteur on torture publicly called on Russia to provide him with urgent medical care. No response followed.

Server Mustafayev: the man who was punished for helping prisoners' families

Server Mustafayev was born in 1986 in Uzbekistan, where Stalin had deported his family in 1944. As a boy, he returned with his parents to newly independent Ukraine and rebuilt a life in his ancestors' homeland. By the time Russia occupied Crimea, he was a father of four and a co-founder of Crimean Solidarity — the grassroots network that documents searches, arrests, and sham trials, and that raises money for the wives and children of Crimean Tatars imprisoned by Russia.

In May 2018 the FSB detained him. The charge was the familiar one: participation in Hizb ut-Tahrir. On 16 September 2020 a Russian military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced him and six other defendants in what human rights activists call the "second Bakhchysarai case" to between 13 and 19 years. Mustafayev received 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony. The case rested on covertly recorded conversations inside a mosque, transcribed by an FSB operative who did not know Arabic well and made dozens of errors, and analysed by "experts" from a pedagogical university in Ufa with no background in Islam.

On 20 May 2025, Freedom House awarded Mustafayev its first-ever Alfred Moses Liberty Award for his work with Crimean Solidarity, noting that he had helped victims of Russian persecution before Russia decided he was one of them. He is currently serving his sentence in a Russian colony. His four children have grown up without him.

History, in his case, is repeating itself. His family was exiled from Crimea by the Soviet state in 1944 on invented charges of collective treason. Now a Russian state has again removed him from Crimea and placed him in a colony in Russia — for helping the children of other exiles.

What release looks like

Since 2014, fewer than a dozen political prisoners from Crimea have been returned to Ukraine through exchanges, according to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center's count. The most visible among them show what it takes.

Akhtem Chiygoz, deputy head of the Mejlis, was arrested in January 2015 for his role in organising a rally in Simferopol on 26 February 2014, in support of Ukraine's territorial integrity — a rally held before Russia had even formally extended its "jurisdiction" to the peninsula. He spent 1,000 days in pre-trial detention and was sentenced to eight years. On 25 October 2017 he and fellow Mejlis deputy head Ilmi Umerov were released by Russia and flown to Türkiye, reportedly pardoned by Vladimir Putin after personal intervention by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Nariman Dzhelyal, first deputy chairman of the Mejlis, was taken in September 2021 — days after he attended the inaugural Crimea Platform summit in Kyiv. Russia accused him and his cousins of blowing up a gas pipe in Perevalne. He was sentenced to 17 years. On 28 June 2024 he was returned to Ukraine in a 53rd prisoner exchange brokered with Vatican mediation. The Holy See, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, and the Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine were publicly credited; the diplomatic weight required was considerable. In January 2025 Ukraine appointed Dzhelyal its ambassador to Türkiye.

Explore further

Ukraine secures release of 10 civilians in Vatican-brokered exchange, including Crimean Tatar leader

Human Rights House Crimea and Crimean Process have launched an AI-assisted platform that makes it possible to write letters to Crimean political prisoners through official channels that work with Russian prisons. The system generates a letter based on answers to a short questionnaire, translates it into Russian to comply with prison censorship requirements, and forwards any response to the sender.

For now, that may be the only channel available. As negotiations continue, the number of Crimean prisoners keeps growing—largely unseen and almost entirely excluded from the deals meant to end the war.

Ukraine has lost roughly 500 of the 4,100 M-113 armored personnel carriers its allies supplied. Now a Kyiv manufacturer is building a replacement—and improving on the 1960s American design.

Meet the the Skif by UkrArmoTech, Ukraine's answer to America's iconic M-113 "battle taxi," thousands of which perform an array of lifesaving tasks in Ukrainian brigades.

Designed to match the 14-ton M-113's high speed, impressive maneuverability, flexibility, capaciousness and ease of use, the Skif also improves on the American vehicle's biggest flaw: its thin armor. If it works as advertised, the Skif could speed infantry to and from front-line positions, help wounded troops evacuate to field hospitals and—with add-on weapons—defend against drones or even join mechanized assaults across the 1,200-km no-man's-land.

As a bonus, the tracked Skif could do all these things on rough terrain where Ukrainian forces' other most useful vehicles—its wheeled infantry mobility vehicles—tend to get mired.

The OSINT account Special Kherson Cat helpfully collated the Skif's specifications as the vehicle enters builder's trials.

The Skif's capacity and mobility specifications are similar to the M-113's, but the Ukrainian vehicle has roughly double the protection compared to the American vehicle, which was designed in the 1960s.

It's tall order to replace all the M-113s Ukraine has received from its allies in the 50 months since Russia widened its war of aggression, so don't expect an all-Skif military any time soon. Ukraine has taken delivery of more than 1,600 M-113s, including thousands of standard APC variants as well as specialized models with cargo beds and gun turrets.

The war has been hard on the M-113 fleet, however. The Ukrainians have lost around 500 of the vehicles in combat—and surely written off many more owing to wear and tear.

High demand

Given than a single mechanized brigade might want to possess 100 or so M-113s for various roles, it's easy to imagine overall demand in Ukraine for 10,000 M-113s and similar vehicles. While Ukraine may continue to receive M-113s from allies, it would benefit Ukrainian troops and Ukrainian industry to tap a domestic source for analogue—and improved—vehicles.

It's worth noting that the Americans' own next-generation APC, the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, costs around $2.5 million per vehicle. A made-in-Ukraine APC, even one with a significant number of imported components, would surely be much cheaper.

Still, it's unclear whether Kyiv is willing to spend potentially $1 billion on a large fleet of new APCs when there are other, seemingly more urgent, priorities. Namely, drones.

But inasmuch as Ukrainian forces still need to maneuver under armor and over rough terrain along or near the wide no-man's-land, they should do so in vehicles that balance mobility and protection. The M-113 already balances those competing requirements pretty well. The Skif may balance them even better—and Ukraine would own the supply chain.

Explore further

Attacking through Russia’s best drones, a Ukrainian column lost a precious M-1 tank—and potentially a lot of troops

Ukrainian forces are flying a new AI-assisted attack drone over Donetsk city in order to strike at critical logistical targets.

That Ukrainian drones can range over Donetsk with near impunity is further evidence of the ongoing collapse of Russian air defenses. A collapse that itself is being hastened along by Ukrainian drone strikes.

The fixed-wing Hornet drone, built by US-based Swift Beat LLC, boasts an internal algorithm that scrutinizes the image from the drone's forward-looking camera, and automatically recognizes military targets. The AI can steer the explosive drone to a precision hit even when the distant human operator loses contact with the drone due to interference from weather, terrain or Russian jamming.

The Hornet is a recent addition to the Ukrainian arsenal, and a powerful one. The Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps claimed its drones, which can be identified as Hornets by their distinctive operator displays, are flying over Donetsk city with ease. "Drone units maintain constant surveillance and fire control over all supply routes around Donetsk," the corps stated.

Donetsk city, 40 km from the eastern front line, is a Russian stronghold. But it's an increasingly vulnerable one as Ukraine forces degrade Russian air defenses.

Systematically hunting Russian radio jammers, radars, surface-to-air missile batteries and mobile guns and launchers all along the 1,200-km front line of Russia’s 50-month wider war on Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are “collaps[ing] the layered defensive architecture that the Russian integrated air defense doctrine depends upon to function,” according to an investigation by Tochnyi.info.

The attacks on Russian air defenses—at least 492 of them between June 2025 and early March 2026—are part of a wider plan. Destroying the right air defenses faster than the Russians can replace them has the effect of “facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory,” Tochnyi.info explained.

Explore further

Russian air defenses are collapsing. Now Ukrainian warplanes can hit harder.

Close glide bombing

That was evident on 14 April, when Ukrainian warplanes flew close enough to Donetsk airport to strike Russian drone storage at the airport with GBU-39 glide bombs that range just 40 km or so when dropped from low altitude. That kind of close strike on Donetsk by manned warplanes wasn't possible until recently.

More and more, all sorts of Ukrainian air operations are possible in the increasingly permissive air over Donetsk. Now the 1st Azov Corps' drone units "maintain constant surveillance and fire control over all supply routes around Donetsk."

If any drone-grounding radio jammers have survived the Ukrainian campaign targeting Russian air defenses in the city, the Hornet drones' internal AI can steer the drones right through the electronic protection.

The Hornets appear to be prioritizing trucks and other logistics forces, but if they also strike any remaining air defense systems, they could further loosen the Russians' control of the air space over Donetsk.

That, in turn, would allow Ukrainian drones and warplanes to strike even harder, more precisely and more often in a wider swathe of the Russian rear area.

Explore further

Killer robots don’t exist yet but Ukraine and Russia are getting closer

Ukraine is developing its own version of Russia's Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile. If the air-launched version of Fire Point's FP-9 missile actually works, it could significantly expand the area of Russia where Ukrainian forces can inflict lasting damage on air bases, factories, oil refineries and other strategic targets.

Fire Point has been working on the FP-9 for many months. But it wasn't until recently that Fire Point chief engineer Denys Shtilerman revealed that the ground-launched ballistic missile could eventually evolve into an air-launched ballistic missile in the same class as the 4,300-kg Kinzhal.

Ranging as far as 850 km with an 800-kg warhead, the precision-guided FP-9 is a bigger version of Fire Point's FP-7 ground-launched ballistic missile, which ranges 200 km with a 150-kg warhead. The FP-7 is already in testing. Fire Point plans to begin testing of the FP-9 as early as this summer.

If it enters service and evolves into an air-launched munition, the FP-9 would be the first of its type for Ukrainian forces. Only the most powerful air forces—the Russian and Israeli air forces, to name two—possess air-launched ballistic missiles. Launching a ballistic missile from the air instead of the ground extends its range by potentially hundreds of kilometers.

Explore further

Ukraine is becoming a space power

Even aside from their long range, air-launched ballistic missiles are uniquely powerful munitions. Their high speed makes them extremely hard to intercept.

The Kinzhal, which is launched a specially modified Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor, streaks across the sky as fast as Mach 5.7. It’s so fast that Ukraine’s best kinetic air defenses, its US-made Patriot missiles, struggle to hit incoming Kinzhals. The Russians often include a few Kinzhals in the mix when they bombard Ukrainian cities and power plants.

Desperate to blunt the Kinzhal raids, Ukrainian forces have even deployed sophisticated electronic warfare systems that can, in theory, confuse the Russian missile's flight controls and send it off course. The Ukrainians are apparently eager to hit back at the Russians with a missile that's equally difficult to block.

Space connections

Technically speaking, an air-launched FP-9 is well within the means of Ukraine's sprawling missile industry. The Dnipro-based Yuzhnoye State Design Office has been tinkering with air-launched rockets since the late 1980s.

Yuzhnoye's rockets, designed to be launched by Antonov An-124 transports or Sukhoi Su-27 fighters, are meant for space missions. But it's not difficult to modify a space launch vehicle, meant to carry satellites into orbit, into a weapon. Just swap the satellite for a warhead and send the rocket arcing downward instead of up.

Ukraine is working hard to establish a significant space launch capability. Member of parliament Fedir Venislavskyi, who heads the Subcommittee on State Security of the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee, told RBC-Ukraine the Ukrainian main intelligence directorate has launched at least two space rockets in the 50 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine.

Explore further

Russian air defenses are collapsing. Now Ukrainian warplanes can hit harder.

"This is a unique situation for a country engaged in a full-scale war," Venislavskyi said. He mentioned one launch that occurred in mid-air from the hold of a transport plane. It's unclear whether that launch was one of the two launches conducted by the main intelligence directorate.

That experience could prove extremely valuable as Fire Point develops the FP-9. The first step is to deploy the FP-9 in a simpler ground-launched version. Later, Fire Point could leverage Ukrainian space efforts to also launch FP-9s from the air.

The result, if the stars align, would be a hard-hitting deep strike capability that Russia's air defenses—already frayed by relentless Ukrainian drone strikes—may struggle to defeat.

The Ukrainian air force struck a reported Russian drone storage site at the Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine on 14 April, apparently heavily damaging the site and potentially suppressing Russian drone strikes until new production can make good whatever drones the Russians lost in the strike.

That the Ukrainians targeted a Russian drone depot isn't surprising. Ukrainian forces frequently target Russian drones before they even reach the front line. There were at least two major raids on drone storage at Donetsk airport last month.

What's surprising is how the Ukrainians targeted the depot just northwest of Donetsk city, some 40 km from the front line. According to one observer, the attack involved a mix of SCALP-EG cruise missiles and GBU-39 glide bombs.

The 1,300-kg, French-made SCALP-EG, launched by the Ukrainian air force's small fleet of ex-Soviet Sukhoi Su-24 bombers, ranges hundreds of kilometers under inertial and satellite guidance. It's not terribly difficult for a missile-armed Su-24 to hit Donetsk airport from a launch point safely inside Ukrainian-controlled air space, even the Su-24 is flying low to avoid detection.

Explore further

Ukraine is becoming a space power

The 130-kg, American-made GBU-39 is another matter. The satellite-guided bomb can range more than 100 km on its pop-out wings—but only when dropped from high altitude. From low altitude, the bomb may range just 40 km or so.

For the Ukrainian air force to hit Donetsk airport with GBU-39s means one of two things. Either the launching planes flew high and fast as they vectored toward the airport. Or they flew low—and got close.

Either possibility points to a serious problem for Russian air defenses in the east. A plane flying at high altitude should be an easy target for enemy air defenses. By the same token, a plane flying low directly over territory the enemy controls should also be an easy target.

Ukrainian and American contractors have modified the Ukrainian air force's Soviet-made Sukhoi Su-27 and Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters to carry GBU-39s. The air force's ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters are also compatible with the highly accurate bombs.

Degraded air defenses

That the Russians couldn't stop Ukrainian jets from lobbing GBU-39s at a target 40 km inside Russian-controlled territory underscores how badly Ukrainian forces have degraded Russian air defenses in recent months.

Systematically striking Russian radars, surface-to-air missile batteries and mobile air defense systems all along the 1,200-km front line of Russia’s 50-month wider war on Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are “collaps[ing] the layered defensive architecture that the Russian integrated air defense doctrine depends upon to function,” according to an in-depth investigation by Tochnyi.info.

The strikes on Russian air defenses—at least 492 of them between June and early March—are part of a carefully scripted plan. Destroying the right air defenses faster than the Russians can replace them has the effect of “facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory,” Tochnyi.info explained.

The 14 April raid on Donetsk airport is just one of the operations facilitated by the wider Ukrainian campaign targeting Russian air defenses. The Russians are increasingly vulnerable to ever-deeper Ukrainian air, missile and drone strikes because they're losing air defense systems faster than they can replace them.

One objective of the Ukrainian deep strike campaign is to suppress Russia's own campaign of deep strikes targeting Ukrainian cities. There's evidence the Ukrainian effort is working.

Just nine months ago, Russia was flinging as many as 2,000 Shahed one-way attack drones at Ukrainian cities every week. Air defenses took down 90% of the drones, but the 10% that got through inflicted heavy damage.

And there was seemingly no in sight. The trend line pointed to Russia producing potentially 7,000 Shaheds a week—a volume of drones that could’ve overwhelmed Ukrainian defenses.

But then, without many outside observers noticing, something changed. In recent months, the pace of Shahed strikes has flat-lined, according to one analysis.

Yes, the Russians still pummel Ukrainian cities with 1,500 or more Shaheds a week. But there’s no longer a noticeable trend toward more Shahed attacks. Possibly because the Ukrainians are blowing up more Russian drones on the ground.

Explore further

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is down to 7 major warships. Ukraine is hunting them one by one.

American defense contractor Raytheon signed a $3.7 billion deal to build Patriot missiles for Ukraine using German funding, the company announced on 14 April. 

This will provide an air defense lifeline for Ukraine — for now, Patriots are Ukraine’s only answer to Russian ballistic missiles, although the types of missiles to be produced are older models, less effective against modern ballistics compared to newer versions.

The specific generation Raytheon will supply to Kyiv are Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) designed to counter tactical ballistic missiles and other airborne threats. According to Raytheon and Kyiv officials, “several hundred” missiles will be provided. 

"Raytheon is investing heavily to increase GEM-T production to support growing global demand, driven by major internal and partner investments, second‑sourcing initiatives and the expansion of our global supply chain,” Raytheon President Phil Jasper said in a statement. 

The new GEM-T production facility in Schrobenhausen, Germany will play a "key role" — this facility is operated by a joint venture between Raytheon and MBDA Deutschland, a large German missile manufacturer.

The arrangement is part of a new strategic partnership agreement reached today between Kyiv and Berlin, which included a flurry of arms deals to the tune of 4 billion euros. These include Germany providing Ukraine with more IRIS-T air defense missile launchers, investing in Kyiv’s deep strike capabilities, and exchanging battlefield data. 

"Today we have new cooperation agreements — 10 in total in key areas," said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

Part of that includes the joint production of drones, including mid-strike drones enhanced with AI, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. 

 “Our experience can be integrated into the European security system,” Zelenskyy said. 

Why "several hundred" missiles?

PAC-2 GEM-Ts haven’t been procured by the US military for a while. While some publications have put per-unit cost at $4 million, that price is likely much lower, with $2 million a conservative bottom estimate, US open source analyst John Ridge said. The newer PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) costs $3.8 million apiece, according to US Army documents. 

This would mean that $3.7 billion could theoretically pay for anywhere between 925 to 1,850 GEM-T missiles. 

The announcements did not clarify how the money would be spent or what the production capacity of the Schrobenhausen facility is. 

“Several hundred missiles” could be vague diplomatic language designed to obscure the specifics of the deals or to hide the true number of missiles from Russia. 

It's also unclear when Ukraine will get these missiles. In December, Hartpunkt reported that Germany plans to produce PAC-2 GEM-Ts on its territory with Raytheon, but the delivery date of the first 1,000 to Germany and several other European countries was listed as 2028.

Patriot missile hunger

There is a global hunger for Patriot missiles, especially after the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

US defense contractors can produce 550 PAC-3 MSE interceptors per year, according to the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Estimates. The US Army is buying 224 of them, while the remaining amount is slated for foreign sales. PAC-2s are produced in fewer numbers, Ridge said.

Washington is trying to remedy this. The DoD recently signed a framework with defense giant Lockheed Martin to raise PAC-3 MSE production from 550 to 2,000 units per year over the next 6-7 years.

Business Insider reported that Lockheed is on track to produce more than 600, promising a "significant increase" in 2027. 

Oslo University missile expert Fabian Hoffmann estimated that the current annual production of PAC-2 GEM-T and PAC-3 MSE interceptors is around 850 to 880. However, this barely exceeds the lower-end estimate for annual 9M723 and Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile production, he wrote.  

Ukrainian intelligence wrote that Russia produces at least 70 ballistic missiles of various types per month, many of which go straight from the factory to the launch site, to be used against Ukraine. 

Other miltech agreements

German company Diehl Defence is also providing Ukraine with more IRIS-T launchers, according to the German Defense Ministry. Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said a total of 36 IRIS-T launchers will be supplied.

IRIS-T surface-launched missiles come in different variants, including short-range (SLS) and medium-range (SLM) variants, which have a higher operational ceiling.

Diehl also signed a cooperation agreement with Ukrainian companies Fire Point and Luch Design Bureau. The former makes a range of attack drones and missiles including the Flamingo, while the latter is behind the Neptune cruise missile and the recently re-unveiled Koral surface to air missile, among other products.

Additionally, Germany will invest 300 million euros in Ukraine’s long-range capabilities, to help Ukraine ramp up its production of drones and missiles that can hit Russia.

This will add further momentum to Ukraine’s scaling deep strike campaign targeting Russia’s energy and military infrastructure. Said campaign hit a new peak last month, with some estimates saying that Ukraine launched more long-range drone strikes than Russia in March — over 7,000 systems, at ranges of up to 1,500 kilometers into Russia’s territory.

“The campaign's results speak for themselves, likely crossing thresholds earlier phases did not reach: cumulative damage to Russian energy infrastructure now appears to be outpacing Russia’s capacity to repair and replace it,” Hoffmann wrote. 

Then, Ukraine and Germany are also jointly producing mid-strike drones, which have been giving the Russian troops extra trouble of late. These mid-range drones like the FP-2, the Rubaka, and others, are striking Russian deployment points, HQs, repair bases, warehouses, aircraft, ships, and so on, much to the chagrin of Russian warfighters and military bloggers.

Explore further

Ukraine tips drone war in its favor

Fedorov said that in the first phase of the agreement, 5,000 AI-enhanced drones will be built for the Ukrainian military. 

“Grateful to Boris Pistorius for his leadership and systemic support,” Fedorov said in a statement. “This is a win-win cooperation that strengthens the defense of Ukraine and the security of all of Europe.”

Finally, Germany and Ukraine agreed to share battlefield data. That includes analysis of the deployment of German weapon systems, including the PzH 2000, RCH 155, and IRIS-T, as well as the exchange of Ukrainian expertise and battlefield data, including digital systems such as Avengers, DELTA, and other solutions.

Last month, Ukraine opened up its battlefield data to allies, to help train their military AI. According to Fedorov, the data sharing platform will allow partners to safely train models without direct access to sensitive information, and work with a large array of labeled photo and video materials, which is constantly updated.

Experts told Euromaidan Press that Ukraine is most likely a world leader in such data, making it an attractive partner for any ally seeking to implement machine learning in their weapons.

Full list of 14 April agreements

• A declaration of strategic partnership between Ukraine and Germany
• Cooperation on battlefield data — enhanced interaction between the ministries of defense on tech and data use to upgrade battlefield equipment
• Joint declaration supporting industrial recovery and resilience — Germany will contribute an initial 30 million euros to aid Ukrainian industry and restore capacity
• Implementation of the agreement on joint production of Anubis and Seth-X-G unmanned systems. The contract value is 281 million euros
• Raytheon deal for the supply of PAC-2 missiles and Diehl deal for IRIS-T systems
• Memorandum of Cooperation between the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine and the German Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development, and Construction
• A Memorandum of Understanding between the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources of Germany on mineral exploration
• Joint Communiqué on Ukrainian-German Cooperation in the Field of Mineral Resources
• Joint Declaration of Intent on expanding institutional partnership between Germany’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy, Family, and Unity 

Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate has a space launch capability, a Ukrainian lawmaker revealed to RBC-Ukraine. At least twice since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, the intelligence directorate has launched rockets as high as 200 km. Space begins at 100 km.

One launch took place in mid-air. A transport plane carried the rocket to an altitude of 8 km before releasing it.

That's a new capability for Ukraine but it's not a new concept. For a period of time beginning in the late 1980s, the Dnipro-based Yuzhnoye State Design Office developed multi-stage space launch vehicles that could be launched by military aircraft.

Launching a rocket from an airplane in mid-air reduces the thrust a rocket must produce to reach the edge of the atmosphere, 100 km up.

Revived for use in the current war, the mid-air rocket launches could—along with the ground launches—help transform Ukraine into a regional space power. Ukrainian forces could loft early-warning satellites that could detect incoming Russian attacks. With further development, the launch vehicles could even evolve into interceptors capable of knocking down Russian missiles and satellites.

Explore further

Russia’s unstoppable Mach-6 missile just got killed by a Ukrainian drone

Member of parliament Fedir Venislavskyi, who heads the Subcommittee on State Security of the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee, told RBC-Ukraine the main intelligence directorate has launched at least two rockets in the 50 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine. One rocket reached an altitude of 100 km; another climbed to 204 km.

"This is a unique situation for a country engaged in a full-scale war," Venislavskyi said.

Venislavskyi mentioned a launch that occurred in mid-air from the hold of a transport plane. It's unclear whether that launch was one of the two launches conducted by the main intelligence directorate.

In any event, Venislavskyi said the series of launches "means Ukraine already has the technical capability to counter similar enemy attack systems and destroy them in space."

In fact, there's probably a lot of work left to do—especially for routine mid-air launches of operational space capabilities. Yuzhnoye has been developing air-launched rockets since the late 1980s without a lot of obvious progress. "More than a dozen of air-space rocket complex versions have been considered with different launch vehicles," the company explained in a pamphlet.

The rockets themselves aren't even the hard part.

Payload is everything

It's one thing to stack solid- and liquid-fueled rocket stages on top of each other and either hang them under the belly of a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter or load them into the cargo hold of an Antonov An-124 airlifter. The Su-27 could launch the rocket while in a steep climb. The An-124 would drop the rocket from its hold while in a gentle climb. Once free of the hold, the rocket would ignite.

But a launch vehicle is only as useful as its payload. Venislavskyi claimed the recent launches weren't tests—they part of wartime operations.

It's not clear what that means, however. Did the intelligence directorate launch sensor-equipped satellites, perhaps as part of a wider effort to equip Ukraine with the same kind of space-based early warning systems that many of its most powerful allies already posses?

Or did the intel agency place tiny communications satellites into orbit in order to decrease Ukraine's reliance on private space firms such as Elon Musk's Starlink.

We don't know.

It's far less likely Ukraine is developing an anti-satellite rocket, or an interceptor rocket that can hit enemy ballistic missiles in the cold of space. Few countries possess robust anti-satellite capability. Even fewer possess missile-defenses that can function in a vacuum.

Kyiv obviously has lofty space ambitions, however. In launching rockets from the ground and from the air, Ukraine is restarting long-stalled efforts that made it—and, by extension, the now-defunct Soviet Union—a leading space power during the Cold War.

Explore further

Ukraine’s big boom FP-2 drones just blew up four Russian Orions inside their Crimean hangar

Ukraine launched rockets into space twice, from its own territory, during the full-scale invasion and more are on the way, Fedir Venislavskyi, head of the Subcommittee on State Security on the Parliamentary Defense Committee, told RBC-Ukraine in an interview. 

The country’s intelligence directorate (GUR) was in charge of the launches during the tenure of former director Kyrylo Budanov — one launch vehicle supposedly reached 100 kilometers and the other one reached 204 kilometers. According to Venislavskyi, these were not experiments, but actual combat missions.

"This is a unique situation for a country engaged in a full-scale war," the MP said. "Ukraine has the technical capability to counter similar enemy attack systems and strike them down in space."

Elsewhere in the interview, the MP noted that Ukraine wants to create its own space force, in part to defend from Russian weapons like the Oreshnik, an intermediate-range ballistic missile that can carry multiple independent warheads. 

These programs aren’t just meant for defense.

"We have missiles that almost nobody knows about, which are able to strike enemy territory at ranges up to 500 kilometers at hypersonic speeds," Venislavskyi added.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Ukraine has been developing dedicated hypersonic weapons, such as hypersonic glide vehicles. “Ordinary” ballistic missiles can reach speeds above Mach 5 (6,100 kilometers per hour), a commonly-defined threshold of where “hypersonic” speed begins. 

Rather, Venislavsky’s words hinted that Ukraine’s arsenal is more varied than most people are aware of, though the current scale of these capabilities is still unclear.

The MP also said that GUR successfully launched a carrier rocket from an aircraft flying 8 kilometers in the air and is working on expanding this program.

Airborne launches of this sort reduce how much gravity and atmospheric resistance the vehicle must fight against, increasing how far they can go on a full supply of fuel. 

Space missile defense

According to the interview, Ukraine wants to create its own space force for two major reasons, one of which is missile defense. Venislavskyi mentioned the Oreshnik by name. 

Russia launched its second Oreshnik attack on Ukraine on 8 January, most likely targeting the Lviv State Aircraft Repair Plant. It is armed with up to six multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each of which can carry up to six submunitions. 

Evidence suggests that the missile was not equipped with high explosives, instead dealing damage with sheer kinetic impact. However, the Oreshnik's payloads have limited accuracy, with a 50% chance of hitting within 200 meters of their targets, according to missile expert Fabian Hoffmann.

This reduces its utility at destroying targets, unless multiple missiles are used. Problem is, they’re expensive. That gives Russia limited utility per ruble invested. Still, that doesn’t mean the Oreshnik can’t be scary. 

If Ukraine wants to be able to shoot down these kinds of weapons, it's too late to react by the time the payloads are hurtling down at Mach 10 onto their targets. The MP said that it's much easier to shoot down such weapons while they're still 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, if Ukraine has sufficient warning of launch.

Independent communications

The other major purpose of Ukraine’s nascent space force program is for communications. 

Ukraine relies heavily on Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. Starlink has been extremely useful to Ukrainian forces for its reliability and ease of use. Russia also got a lot out of Starlink until the Defense Ministry moved to block them, in cooperation with the company.

Starlink is also hard to jam. The signal is of a higher frequency than ones typically used on the battlefield, making it more difficult to jam. Because the signal travels vertically towards the satellites and back, that only increases jam resistance, compared to waves that travel horizontally. 

However, this reliance comes with risks. Starlink is, after all, a foreign company, whose owner has a fraught relationship with Ukraine. 

Musk has cut off Starlink access before, sabotaging an attack on occupied Crimea; mocked Ukraine's stance on national sovereignty; and talked smack about its NATO prospects. His father even visited Moscow to praise Putin and spread propaganda, among other controversies. 

The US threatened to cut off Starlink in February 2025 if Ukraine didn’t sign a minerals deal.

Venislavskyi said that if Ukraine has its own satellites “will provide fully secure communications for both the state and military leadership.”

Launching satellites isn't cheap but Kyiv and Moscow are trying

However, it's not so simple. Creating a space program requires massive resources and investments and Ukraine isn't exactly flush with cash, armed forces sources told Euromaidan Press. 

After the crackdown, Russia is planning to create its own alternative called Rassvet — “Dawn," spending billions of dollars with a plan to eventually have 900 satellites in orbit by 2035, having launched the first 16 in March. 

These plans are reportedly running into delays already. Meanwhile, Starlink has over 10,000 satellites in orbit today.

Ukraine has less money than Russia. Still, Kyiv is trying. 

Ukrainian company STETMAN is planning to launch its own UASAT low earth orbit satellite in October, with a goal to eventually create a constellation of 245 units. The goal is to reduce reliance on external companies such as SpaceX. 

STETMAN says it's being supported by the Ukrainian government and European partners and has already registered the first satellite with Ukraine's regulatory bodies.

Additionally, Deputy Prime Minister for Strategic Industries Oleh Urusky said last month that SpaceX was selected to launch the Sich 2-30 remote sensing satellite into orbit in December. 

Urusky said the Sich 2-30 is “practically ready.”