The city of Lyman, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, stands between Russian forces and their main objectives as Russia's wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 52nd month: the twin cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

To attack Sloviansk and adjacent Kramatorsk from the north, the Russians must first march through or around Lyman and then travel another 13 km along the T0514 road. But the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps is doing its best to spoil the Russian attack—by counterattacking behind the lead Russian elements.

It's been a successful strategy for the Ukrainians. Since late May, mappers and analysts have noted evidence of Ukrainian troops marching through the villages of Nove and nearby Katerynivka, 16 km northeast of Lyman. The villages buttressed the northern edge of a Russian-held salient just north of Lyman.

If the Russians had succeeded in extending the salient farther to the west, they may have succeeded in partially surrounding Lyman, potentially putting pressure on Ukrainian supply lines into the city. The Ukrainian counterattacks along the northern edge of the salient around Nove and Katerynivka did to the Russians north of Lyman what the Russians were trying to do to the Ukrainians in Lyman: threaten their supply lines.

Now the Russians are reeling and Ukrainian troops are pushing back against the westernmost edge of the salient. Analyst Andrew Perpetua claimed he logged Russian social media posts, which he explained have since been deleted, that purportedly indicated meaningful Ukrainian advances at multiple points around the tip of the salient.

"All evidence suggests that Ukraine has advanced further than any map currently depicts north of Lyman," Perpetua wrote. "Russians say Ukraine has captured towns and other areas that were once firmly held are now contested."

The Ukrainian attacks on the salient north of Lyman are good news for the overall Ukrainian defense not just of Lyman, but also of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Preventing an encirclement of Lyman could forestall a Russian advance past the city—and delay or block a northern assault on Sloviansk and then Kramatorsk.

Southern approach

That doesn't mean the Russians won't march on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from another direction. Having occupied the ruins of Pokrovsk and neighboring Myrnohrad early this year, the Russians are now staging for a southern assault toward Kramatorsk and then Sloviansk.

But the most direct route, along the H-20 highway, is blocked by the Ukrainian garrison in Kostiantynivka, 15 km south of Kramatorsk. Here, the Russians are enjoying much greater success than they are around Lyman. Successfully pushing the disputed gray zone north until it fully encompassed Kostiantynivka, the Russians can now infiltrate the city from several directions.

"There are a number of positive trends on the battlefield for Ukraine compared to 2025 (and advances in some directions), but the situation in Kostiantynivka is still deteriorating," noted Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

According to mapper Clément Molin, the most optimistic scenario for Russia is that its forces occupy Lyman and Kostiantynivka this summer, possibly allowing the Russians to lay siege to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk by the end of the year.

But Lyman holds thanks in part to those counterattacks and Kostiantynivka is "holding longer than thought," Molin noted. So the optimistic scenario for Russia may be slipping away.

That means the pessimistic scenario for Russia is increasingly likely. In that scenario, Molin explained, the Russians capture Lyman too late to lay siege to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk this year. "That's what is currently happening," Molin concluded.

For Ukraine, even delaying a Russian siege of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk represents a major win. Time means opportunity, and Ukrainian drone forces have been seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on Russian supply lines all across occupied Ukraine.

The counterlogistics campaign could reshape the entire battlefield in the coming months. For Russia, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are realistic objectives right now, even if it takes another six months for Russian forces to reach the twin cities. That could change as Ukraine continues fraying Russian supply lines.

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Russian forces have made fresh tactical advances into Kostiantynivka, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on 10 June. The city sits at the southern tip of Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast Fortress Belt — Moscow's main effort for the spring-summer 2026 offensive. Russia missed its own May deadline to take the city, and the wider fortified chain stays out of operational reach.

Two Russian tactical groups push into eastern Kostiantynivka

Two named Russian formations have pushed into eastern Kostiantynivka from the south, Ukrainian military observer Kostiantyn Mashovets reported on 10 June. He identified them as the "Bakhmut" tactical group and the "Dzerzhinsk" (Toretsk) tactical group. The "Bakhmut" group is built around Russia's 3rd Army Corps (AC) under the Southern Grouping of Forces. The "Dzerzhinsk" group operates in the area of responsibility of the 8th Combined Arms Army (CAA) of the Southern Military District. It likely includes elements of five CAAs, the 3rd AC, and Russian naval fleets, Mashovets noted.

Elements of the "Bakhmut" group pushed from Stupochky through Novodmytrivka into northeastern Kostiantynivka. They also advanced along the T-0504 Pokrovsk-Bakhmut road as far as the city's railway station. The "Dzerzhinsk" group moved from Illinivka, south of the city, into areas stretching from northwestern to southwestern Kostiantynivka near the railway station. Mashovets assessed that it has likely achieved a tactical breakthrough in the western, central part of the city. Forward assault elements of the two groups now stand roughly two kilometers apart. Russian forces have so far failed to seize the railway station. Ukrainian troops cleared the village of Dovha Blaka southwest of the city of Russian infiltrators.

Eight months of grinding, one missed deadline

ISW noted that Russian forces opened the campaign for Kostiantynivka in August 2025 after seizing the majority of Chasiv Yar and Toretsk, with Toretsk alone running to roughly 26,000 Russian casualties. The first Russian troops infiltrated Kostiantynivka itself in October 2025. Russia has since worked into at least 12.69% of the city. Ukrainian officials reported earlier this spring that the Russian command had set a May 2026 deadline for the seizure. That deadline has come and gone.

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Russia has poured forces into the effort regardless. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on 2 May that Russian activity in this direction noticeably increased in April. Russian units in the area had reportedly been replenished by 80% as of 6 June, ISW noted. The Russian command reportedly redeployed elements of the 70th Motorized Rifle Division to the Kostiantynivka-Chasiv Yar area last December. The redeployment likely came in preparation for the spring push.

Tactical gains likely, the Fortress Belt still out of reach

ISW assessed that Russian forces will likely keep infiltrating throughout Kostiantynivka. They will likely consolidate positions in parts of the city while suffering high casualties. Russia's 3rd AC northeast of the city appears to be struggling to dislodge Ukrainian forces from Chasiv Yar. That inhibits any move to envelop Kostiantynivka from the north. A Russian milblogger claimed on 9 June that Ukrainian forces recently counterattacked near Chasiv Yar. The milblogger added that Ukraine still holds Podilske and Mykolaivka west of the town.

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The northern flank of the Fortress Belt is also bogged down. Russia opened its spring-summer 2026 offensive with mechanized assaults around Lyman. Those assaults signaled intent to advance on Sloviansk from the northeast. They produced no significant gains, ISW noted. The Russian command likely shifted weight south to Kostiantynivka. Russia's Western Grouping of Forces covers the front from Kupiansk through Lyman. It likely lacks the combat power to push on Sloviansk while balancing operations toward Kupiansk and Borova. 

Russian logisticians are desperately scrambling to save their truck convoys from Ukrainian drones. Besides rerouting convoys away from the most vulnerable highways, some commanders are also deploying mobile gun teams to escort the cargo trucks.

Whether those gun teams can shoot down enough drones to turn the tide of the escalating logistics war remains to be seen. How high the drones fly before they strike could make all the difference.

This spring, Ukrainian drone units launched an intensive campaign of strikes targeting the thousands of Russian trucks that, every day, shuttle supplies and reinforcements from depots deep in the rear area to front-line field armies. The aim: to weaken Russian regiments before they can launch an assault across the gray zone.

"We are launching a 'logistics lockdown' for the Russian army," Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced. "We are scaling middle-strike operations to systematically destroy enemy logistics and supply lines, stripping them of their capacity to mount offensive actions."

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The counterlogistics campaign, mostly carried out by Ukrainian drone units flying jam-resistant middle-strike drones with AI-assisted targeting—the $5,000 Swift Beat Hornet is one of the most common—initially targeted convoys traveling along the most obvious routes, including the west-to-east M-14 highway connecting southern Russia to occupied Crimea. The M-14 is the Ukrainian portion of the wider European E-58 highway.

By late May, the Ukrainian defense ministry was tallying hits on nearly 500 Russian trucks every day, a ninefold increase on the overall average of daily truck strikes since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022. Just 3,500 Russian cargo trucks plied the M-14 every day, so the losses were significant. For now, the Kremlin is able to make good its truck losses by redeploying vehicles from the active fleet.

But soon, it may have to tap the tens of thousands of older trucks sitting in long-term storage. And those decades-old trucks are in pretty bad shape. "Most of them are scrap metal husk, utterly impossible to reactivate," analyst Jompy noted.

Hardening the convoys

Clearly realizing they can't sustain the loss of 500 trucks a day, Russian commanders are getting creative. They've begun rerouting trucks away from the M-14 and sending them along back roads instead in order to spread them out and complicate the Ukrainians' drone sortie planning. Military traffic along the M-14 has dropped by 71% since late May as trucks follow alternate routes to forward bases, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces.

But the Russians are also arming the truck convoys, which previously traveled without any defensive weapons. Observer Kim Hovik claimed they recently saw videos depicting Russian convoys that included as many as four trucks and utility vehicles carrying gunners.

Guns aren't the best defenses against drones, but the Russians don't have many other options. Electronic warfare systems that scramble drones' control signals don't work against drones with self-contained AI targeting systems that can spot and home in on trucks without any input from a remote operation.

And Russia's longer-range air defense systems, its fixed and mobile surface-to-air missile systems, have been ravaged by a parallel Ukrainian drone campaign specifically targeting air defenses. Between June 2025 and March 2026, Ukrainian drones blew up more than 400 radars and SAM systems: far more than Russia can replace in just nine months.

How well the gunners work against Hornets and other Ukrainian drones might depend on how high the drones fly while patrolling for trucks. Ukraine's own mobile gun teams were effective against Russian Shahed drones until the Shaheds began flying thousands of feet in the air. Now the Ukrainian gunners are "largely ineffective," according to a Ukrainian electronic warfare officer who goes by "Alchemist."

It's unclear how high a Hornet drone can cruise while still effectively scanning for trucks. Higher flights might be necessary, however. Ukrainian drone forces must adapt to Russian adaptation as the counterlogistics drone war grinds on.

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Ukrainian forces conducted 50,000 missions with unmanned ground vehicles as of January, the Ministry of Defense announced. The number is constantly growing: from 7,500 missions in January to 14,000 in May, and the number of units employing UGVs grew from 117 to 230.

"The UGV is a very, very promising thing," callsign Electric of the 93rd Brigade told Euromaidan Press—his brigade was an early adopter, having used UGVs for three years running.

"It has already proven its effectiveness, developing and scaling quickly, and becoming one of those tools of war that is already contributing to victory."

UGVs are meant to solve Ukraine’s chronic personnel shortages and battlefield casualties and have been rather effective, according to testimonials such as these. The General Staff has credited ground robotic platforms with cutting personnel casualties by up to 30%. In the Azov Corps, a single battalion moves over 40 tons of equipment per month with UGVs.

However, just having more machines is not nearly enough. Ukrainian forces are working to solve a myriad challenges before these machines can live up to their fullest potential, including:

• Creating a military doctrine for their use
• Establishing sufficient training for their operation
• Building the infrastructure to deliver, modify, and repair them
• Ironing out spare parts shortages, intercompatibility, and delivery challenges
• Figuring out how to employ the menagerie of the dozens of systems in service 

“The development of UGVs is one of our priorities: the more tasks robots perform, the more lives of military personnel can be saved,” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement. 

More doctrine, more training

While remote-controlled ground crawlers existed before the full-scale invasion, mass adoption only exploded in 2026. The number of units using UGVs doubled between January and June. “The majority of brigades don’t have a (specialized) working UGV unit inside,” said Andrei Kushniarou, Commander of the 108 Battalion “Da Vinci Wolves.”

As a result, many units are getting UGVs for the first time without much of an idea of what to do with them, soldiers said in interviews. This applies not just to driving them but planning missions, figuring out what models work best for specific tasks, and which ones to commit to purchasing. 

“They began rapidly scaling up UGVs in just over six months,” Electric said. “Before that, there was no systematic use of this in the army. There were only isolated units that were doing something, trying things out.” 

“Systematic implementation began in just over six months and it scaled up from a dozen units, to hundreds of units. That is, this is an incredibly rapid leap, so there is no doctrine, nothing. There is only the experience of certain successful units, which share it and finally scale it up.”

This is natural: any new way of war requires figuring out. Ukrainian air defenders and UAV operators have had a long and difficult learning process over the past four years before Ukraine began to tip the drone war in its favor. UGVs must tread a similar path.

For the time being, for every story of a UGV rescuing a wounded soldier or capturing a Russian position, there are lesser-known stories of troops flailing about and learning on the job. Kushniarou said he has seen logistics UGV operators using the same route to deliver supplies to front line troops for half a year, as though inviting Russian FPV drones to come and destroy them. 

“We have some classes for FPV drones, for the bombers, where they use simulators before taking the real drones. But we don't have this kind of thing for UGV's,” said Olexiy Severin, the financial director of Ukrainian Unmanned Systems, which produces the heavy-duty Ravlyk ground drone for units including the military intelligence (GUR).

The solution is more training. There are some military training centers, such as the one operated by the 3rd Corps, as well as others scattered among different units. The military is working on creating more—for example, the South Operation Command, which plans to not only train soldiers how to use drones but to better integrate them with infantry. Volunteer-led initiatives like Dignitas are launching their own programs.

One bottleneck is the lack of experienced instructors, soldiers said. Experienced operators are at a premium, both on the front line and in the classroom. Meanwhile, current best practices become outdated in roughly six months. Another bottleneck is cash.

"We need money. A lot," Electric said. "First and foremost, money for scaling up production facilities, training centers and infrastructure development workshops. Everything is ready for it, it's just a matter of stating the facts and writing a doctrine."

Managing the menagerie of systems

Around 33 different models are available through the DOT-Chain marketplace. The actual number of different models of UGV floating around the country is closer to 200, soldiers said. 

This can be an overwhelming number of systems to get used to. Every system comes with its own nuances, use cases, and teething troubles. And “basically every one” has to be modified by the unit before it can be used, said Mykyta Puz, a technology liaison with the Azov Corps. Other soldiers agreed with him. 

“That's why we were the first to create our own universal control board, which we're installing throughout this entire zoo, standardizing the electronic components at a minimum,” Electric said. They must also add their own cameras and Starlink terminals. 

The 93rd isn’t alone in this. Starlink is the standard army-wide control method for driving UGVs at a distance, yet Starlink doesn’t come standard with UGVs. Many robots come without night vision and thermal cameras integrated into the basic package.

Other parts require tinkering as well, especially when UGVs come from outside Ukraine. Multiple soldiers were quite negative with their reviews of foreign-made machines, with reviews like "highly expensive, utterly useless" and "the quality of work is really bad.”

Specific complaints ranged from the act of driving toggling a safety cutoff switch, antennas jostling loose, or radio controls dying when a friendly UAV was flying nearby. 

The 93rd is trying to solve the “zoo” issue by limiting themselves to no more than 10 systems they trust, of which two are the mainstay and several more sit in backup. 

Spare parts and infrastructure

The challenge there is access to spare parts, with Electric calling it “critical… We only supply them through our own resources and methods.” 

Kushniarou said that units have a choice to make. They can decide to rely on just one or two developers, to buy UGVs from them. But if these developers get hit by a Russian missile or some parts fail to arrive from China, they can be screwed. 

Or they can embrace the “zoo,” work with many developers at the same time, which spreads out the risk, but turns into a “logistical hell” where parts are concerned. This also calls for really good specialists who know how to work with a dozen different systems. 

Getting parts can be a doozy, even when they are available. Severin said that units are begging his company to include a second battery for the Ravlyk UGV into the standard purchase package because "to buy additional batteries is all the circles of hell, harder than to buy a new UGV, because they have to go through multiple layers of military permission." 

He said that the company replaces wheels free of charge at its own expense, just so Ravlyk users can get them repaired in a week instead of a month. 

The solution is to build a more robust military-wide infrastructure for UGVs, soldiers said. That includes a spare parts pipeline, repair and servicing centers, and analytical centers for what can be improved. 

"You can’t just have a UGV, you need to create infrastructure around it,” like workshops, R&D and analytical centers, and logistics systems for parts, Kushniarou said. “Without infrastructure, any UGV is just a tool without a master.”

Scaling up adoption

Ukraine has set a goal to offload 100% of logistics tasks to UGVs. If all of the doctrinal and military-industrial teething troubles can be resolved, many more frontline warfighters’ lives can be saved. 

The Defense Ministry previously mentioned several things it’s doing to accelerate adoption. 

One is the development of “a separate UGV competence center” that will liaise between the General Staff and the military and become a “single point of contact” for manufacturers. 

The ministry also said it’s working on “comprehensively resolving” a VAT issue that led to contract delays. Severin told Euromaidan Press that a VAT that applies to electric vehicles has hit the Ravlyk, making it cost 30% more when purchased directly by units, discouraging them from using it. 

Procurement contracts are now being signed for the following year to ensure the lots can be delivered. 

As for 2026, Ukraine has plans to contract for 50,000 UGVs. But as of mid-May, the Ministry of Defense wrote that over 3,000 orders have been filed through the DOT-Chain marketplace and over 1,000 of them were delivered. Even though this number doesn’t include direct unit purchases, getting to 25,000 units by the end of June seems unlikely. 

It would be in the military’s best interest to prioritize getting good systems rather than fulfilling the number at any cost, developers said.

One-way attack drones from Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces struck five Russian cargo ships on the Sea of Azov on 5 June.

The strikes, which left at least one ship a burned-out hulk, are a kind of corollary to Ukraine's escalating campaign of middle-distance strikes on Russian supply lines on land in occupied territories. Aiming to weaken Russian regiments before they can attack across the disputed gray zone, Kyiv's drone units aren't only hitting trucks and vans on land—they're also hitting ships at sea.

"There's a method to the madness here," Ukraine Control Map explained. "Take out the ships, force Russia to use more trucks, more logistic bottlenecks." Then hammer the bottlenecks with drones.

The ultimate goal is to make it more difficult for the Kremlin to resupply and reinforce its 700,000 troops in occupied Ukraine. It's cheaper and easier to defeat an attack before it even begins by starving the attacking troops of food, fuel, batteries, ammunition and other vital supplies.

The ships the USF hit with Fire Point FP-1 drones on 5 June were spread out across a wide area. They were in occupied Mariupol and Berdiansk and along the coast of occupied Ukraine — the same Berdiansk port where Ukrainian drones struck a Russian munitions cargo ship on consecutive nights at the start of June.

What they had in common was their disguise. Civilian-owned but allegedly illegally working on behalf of sanctioned Russian entities, the ships sail without obvious markings or easily tracked radio transponders. There could be scores of such ships plying the Black Sea on Russia's behalf every day.

Two of the ships hit on 5 June, the dry cargo vessels Natra and Zirkon, were inbound from Türkiye to Rostov-on-Don when Ukrainian drones struck them in Taganrog Bay—empty, heading to load grain at a port Western governments and Ukraine identify as a transit hub for grain looted from occupied Ukrainian territory. Five Azerbaijani crew members on private contracts were killed and three wounded, Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said. Brovdi didn't address the deaths.

Telling apart a ship hauling Russian military fuel from a ship empty and heading to pick up looted grain is the kind of distinction that's hard to make from a drone's-eye view.

Ships that can haul thousands of tons of supplies every trip are much more efficient than trucks that can haul just a few tons apiece. Cargo ships can't deliver supplies to inland forces, of course, but they can move cargo between ports in southern Russia and ports in occupied Ukraine, bringing that cargo as close as possible to the gray zone before trucks must take over the shipping effort.

A thick-skinned ship is a tougher target than a thin-skinned truck, of course. But Ukraine's FP-1 drones carry a 100-kg blast-fragmentation warhead, with a TNT main charge boosted by the more powerful OKFOL explosive. The combination throws fragments outward and starts fires inside the target—the same mechanism that left the corvette Boikiy burning for hours at Kronstadt on 3 June.

Sitting duck trucks

Russia's thousands of military supply trucks are already squarely in the crosshairs of Ukrainian drone units. Since launching their coordinated counterlogistics campaign this spring, the Ukrainians have increased their monthly truck strikes nearly tenfold, from around 60 per month to nearly 500, as per the Ukrainian general staff.

But a comprehensive assault on Russian logistics requires raids on sea traffic, as well. That effort may have begun in earnest on 5 June. "Cargo ships and tankers with their names painted over by Black Sea looters and their transponders switched off, used for the quiet theft of Ukrainian grain and the transport of military cargo and fuel, can no longer count on either long service lives or uninterrupted schedules," the 414th Unmanned Strike Aviation Brigade crowed.

If they can disable enough ships, the Ukrainian drone teams may compel Russian logisticians to shift more supplies by land. To reach Russian regiments in southern and eastern Ukraine, those supplies normally travel east to west along the M-14 highway that runs close and parallel to the Black Sea coast.

That highway and connecting roads have become a kill zone for Russian trucks as more FP-1, FP-2, Hornet and Bulava drones take to the sky, increasingly unbothered by Russia's collapsing air defense network. Ukrainian industry now churns out tens of thousands of middle-strike drones every month, some for as cheaply as a few thousand dollars apiece.

The Russians are trying to find alternate routes that avoid the most heavily droned roads, but once a truck gets close to its destination, it has no choice but to follow a dwindling number of paths. Ukrainian intelligence knows where the Russians' main divisional bases are; they know the trucks must eventually turn into these bases. The near approaches are now becoming kill zones alongside the M-14 and other main roads.

It'll take many more strikes on Russian ships to seriously dent the sea logistics and force more supplies onto land routes. But the effort is underway. "The occupier's smuggling logistics must be stopped," the 414th Unmanned Strike Aviation Brigade explained.

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If you want to understand how Ukraine’s interceptor drones are evolving and improving but don’t have a lot of time, you can just take a look at the Litavr interceptor announced by the Ministry of Defense on 8 June. 

F-Drones’ Litavr has been in serial production since the fall but its specs have been classified until now. While its capabilities do not appear to be brand new or exclusive to itself, the features list reads like a map of all the ways Ukrainian engineering and battle testing of the past few years made their various interceptors so highly sought-after.  

That includes autonomous last-mile guidance, non-GPS navigation, radar integration, and the ability to control the drone from thousands of kilometers away. The company reportedly manufactures most of its own components, reducing dependence on China. 

All these things are instrumental to Ukraine’s goal of “closing the sky” to Russian weapons. The Defense Ministry set a goal of shooting down no less than 95% of Russian drones and missiles and has been steadily climbing towards that goal: from just over 80% shot down late last year, to 92% shot down in May. 

Last-mile autonomy

According to the MoD, the Litavr's key ability is the automatic pixel lock last mile guidance, in which a pilot controls the speed, while the drone does the rest. 

Semi-autonomous weapons are one of the major achievements of Ukraine’s military-industrial ecosystem. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov emphasized autonomy as a key technology. 

“Autonomy is one of the key areas of development of modern air defence,” he said in a 8 June statement.

“Technologies like this enable faster responses to large-scale attacks and more effective protection of Ukrainian cities. We are scaling solutions that have already proved their effectiveness in combat conditions.” 

Fedorov claimed that a Brave1 company has already created tech that automates 95% of the "entire interception process, from launching a drone to destroying a Shahed," which has been battle-tested in Kharkiv Oblast. 

AI-assisted navigational and target lock tools are present in a plethora of Ukrainian drones: from deep and middle strike UAVs, to FPVs, to interceptors, which were reportedly getting anti-Shahed modules in December.

Across Ukraine and around the world, companies and volunteer cooperatives are using the country’s archive of battlefield footage to train models to become progressively more accurate and deadlier in combat. 

Navigation and controls

Besides its daytime and thermal cameras, the Litavr has its own non-GPS navigation tools and integrates into existing radar systems through a proprietary software package. 

The announcement was light on details, but this is another demonstration of Ukraine creating solutions to the realities of Russia’s war. The skies and battlefields are full of jamming and spoofing, which makes GPS a highly-unreliable solution. 

Adaptations have included visual-inertial odometry, like the kind NASA's Mars drones use, beacon-based systems, AI that image matches preloaded terrain data, and tapping into nearby radar systems, like the Litavr does. 

The drone also incorporates a system that allows operators to steer them from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. 

This system has been in development for over a year and announced in April, with more than 10 manufacturers integrating it into their systems. Wild Hornets made a splash online with their announcement that an operator took down a target from outside Ukraine's borders.

Speed and range

The Litavr has a reported top speed of 350 kilometers per hour. This isn’t the first drone with such a claim—the MoD said the same thing of the JEDI Shahed Hunter presented in March—and other drones before it had similar claims made about them, like the Furia.  

However, 350 km/h is on the upper end of most interceptors in use these days. The more famous drones of this class like SkyFall’s P1-SUN has a reported top speed of 310 km/h and Wild Hornets’ Stinger reportedly hit 315 km/h in tests, though the website says it tops out at 280 km/h. This was a massive upgrade from earlier Sting, which could reportedly go up to 160 km/h.

Ukraine is pushing that ceiling higher. As early as December, the Brave1 Defense Cluster announced that Ukraine can now mass-produce a motor that can accelerate an interceptor to 400 kilometers per hour. The manufacturer, Motor G, makes more than 100,000 motors per month, according to the announcement.

The growing speed is needed to combat jet-powered Shaheds, whose speeds can climb up to 600 kilometers per hour, which is a drum MoD adviser Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov has been beating constantly. Ukrainian devs are working on the problem: for example, General Cherry and STRIX are reportedly integrating chemical boosters into their Bullet interceptors.

Litavr’s operational range of 40 kilometers appears to be comparable to the Sting, though the MoD claimed a record flight of 80 km for the former. The flight ceiling of 9 kilometers appears to be higher than many interceptors of Litavr’s type, which range from 3 to 7 km.

Reducing reliance on China

The manufacturing is also indicative of what Ukraine is trying to accomplish. F-Drones reportedly builds most of its own electronics, engines and flight controllers.

Ukraine's government has a stated goal to reduce its dependence on Chinese parts, which, while cheaper, also pose a security risk. If China stops the flow of parts for whatever reason, Ukraine's entire weapons industry can be in trouble. China also supplies many of the parts for the very Shaheds these interceptors are meant to stop. 

According to a December report by Zmiinyi (Snake) Island Institute, Ukraine's domestic manufacturers covered 70% of the need for communication systems for controlling drones, and 55% for analog video transmitters. The institute believes that Ukraine has the potential to cover 100% of the market in these three categories. 

At the time of the report, Ukrainian manufacturers produced just 25% of flight controllers for domestic FPV drones, 14% of the thermal cameras and 12% of the electric motors. However, the Institute projected that Ukraine can produce as much as 75% of flight controllers, 90% of thermal cameras and 50% of electric motors over 2026.

On 3 June, at least one attack drone from the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces flew more than 1,100 km to strike a Russian navy missile corvette drydocked in Kronstadt, in the Baltic Sea just offshore from St. Petersburg. It was the first hit on Russia's Baltic Fleet of the wider war.

The Fire Point FP-1 drone hit the corvette Boikiy. Overhead satellite imagery confirmed the strike, and a video from the adjacent pier made clear how bad the damage is. The 105-m corvette, one of the Baltic Fleet's frontline warships, "burned for hours," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Mark Krutov noted.

The FP-1's design explains the heavy damage. "It seems that drone was carrying quite a substantial payload," Krutov mused.

It's true. Ukrainian drone-maker Fire Point has been tweaking the propeller-driven FP-1 to increase its explosive firepower, finally addressing a longstanding problem with Ukraine's deep strike drones. Fire Point claimed it produces 300 of the $50,000 FP-1s and similar FP-2s every day.

The first version of the FP-1 flew 1,000 km but, like many Ukrainian drones, carried a fairly small warhead weighing just 60 kg. The earliest FP-2s traded away fuel for explosive payload and thus struck with a 105-kg warhead, albeit at much shorter range.

It wasn't enough firepower to destroy the toughest targets. Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight blamed the "relatively small warhead size of certain Ukrainian drones" for the limited damage Ukrainian strikes inflicted on Russian refineries in 2024.

It was a serious problem but an understandable one. Ukrainian drone developers were focused on boosting the range of their drones in order to inflict some damage, even if modest, on the most distant Russian targets. "Given the long distances these drones must travel, increasing their warhead size would require adjustments to weight, fuel capacity and overall design," Frontelligence Insight explained.

With time, developers found a way to add firepower without sacrificing range. In March, Fire Point co-founder Denys Shtilerman told Army TV that the company had redesigned the FP-1 and FP-2, adding fuel tanks inside the wings in order to free up space for bigger warheads.

Big boom drones

Now the FP-1 can strike with a 105-kg warhead. The short-range FP-2 now packs an impressive 158-kg warhead. It's not clear which variant hit Boikiy, but the heavier payload is consistent with the damage.

The FP-1 and FP-2 carry an OFB-60-type blast-fragmentation warhead, with a TNT main charge boosted by the more powerful OKFOL explosive. The combination delivers heavy fragmentation and blast effects on impact — designed to start fires and damage internal systems rather than punch cleanly through armor.

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Ukrainian drones used to burn one tanker. Now they can burn the whole train

That's well-suited to anti-ship strikes. Modern warships aren't normally heavily armored above the waterline, and a blast-fragmentation warhead that ignites cable routes, ventilation channels, and the spaces between decks can do as much damage through the fire it starts as through the initial explosion.

Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express, analyzing the strike, argued that the post-strike fire likely did more damage to the corvette than the warhead itself. Naval fires spread through cable runs, ventilation shafts, and the spaces between decks — reaching equipment well beyond the impact point. And in a dry dock, with watertight doors propped open for maintenance and automatic firefighting systems offline, the fire spreads further than it would at sea.

It's not clear that the drone that hit Boikiy inflicted maximal damage. But it inflicted enough to take the ship out of commission, possibly for good — and to demonstrate that the Baltic Fleet's home port is no longer beyond reach.

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Russian corvette stationed near St. Petersburg for repairs now needs more of them after Ukrainian strike

The Russians can’t actually boost the production rate of their expensive ballistic missiles like the Iskander-M and the Kinzhal by much. So they’ve found a work-around: a more than twofold increase in production of converted air defense missiles to lob at Ukraine during mass strikes, the General Intelligence Directorate (GUR) told Ukrainska Pravda. 

The Ukrainian Air Force files these RM-48U missiles under “ballistic threats,” together with Iskander-Ms and Kinzhals, because they all follow a ballistic trajectory and are very fast. That is where the similarities end. The RM-48U packs a payload that’s several times smaller, has at most half the range of an Iskander-M, and is highly inaccurate. 

During Russia’s latest strike on Ukraine, which used a record number of ballistic weapons, a significant portion were likely RM-48Us. Despite their 150-170 kilogram high-explosive fragmentation warheads, these missiles seem to have a similar role to decoy Shaheds: meant to saturate and overload air defenses with ballistic targets, to allow more big missiles to get through. And if they kill some people, that’s a bonus.

The problem is that these modified air defense weapons can only be shot down by the same weapons Ukraine needs for Iskander-Ms and Kinzhals: PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot batteries or the Aster-30 interceptors for the SAMP/T air defense systems. And these interceptors are in very short supply. 

As a result, while the destructive potential isn’t great, more RM-48Us in the sky will make it even harder for Ukraine to protect against missile barrages.

The solution is twofold. For one, Ukraine needs more ways to deal with ballistic threats. This will require more production in allied countries, as well as homegrown programs like Fire Point’s project to turn the FP-7 into a Patriot-like interceptor, to the electronic warfare system, purported to be able to “jam” ballistic missiles and make them miss their targets. 

And secondly, more sanctions need to be applied to the Russian enterprises that contribute to its missile program. According to GUR, a dozen of these companies remain sanction-free.

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Contents

• Can Russian missiles really decimate Kyiv? 
  1. A destructive “decoy” 
  2. Air defense shot down 92% of drones, 53% of missiles in May
  3. Iskander-M component producers remain unsanctioned

Can Russian missiles really decimate Kyiv? 

A destructive “decoy” 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Russia manufactures 120 ballistic missiles per month. Multiple publications cited GUR’s statement that Russia can launch 100 ballistic missiles each month and still maintain a stable supply in reserve. 

However, the picture is a little more complicated. When it comes to true exquisite missiles, the Russians are stymied by a fixed supply of common parts, including printed circuit boards, which are needed to produce both ballistic and the cheaper, easier to make cruise missiles.

GUR’s statement to Ukrainska Pravda said that Iskander-M production has remained flat, up to 60 missiles per month and 700 planned in 2026, “same as last year.” The air-launched Kinzhals are being made in even smaller quantities, at up to 10 units per month, with 60 planned to be built in 2026.  

However, GUR also stated that RM-48U production went from 200 in 2025 to a projected 480 in 2026, with a build rate of up to 50 per month. 

These are missiles adapted from 48N6 air defense SAMs meant to be launched out of the S-300PS/PT and S-400 air defense launchers, but converted into surface-to-surface weapons. 

This missile “fulfils a supplementary role for the Russians alongside purpose-built ballistic missiles like the 9M723,” said Justin Bronk, a Senior Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute.

“They present incoming ballistic missile-like targets for Ukrainian air defenders and force them to either ignore them and risk civilian casualties or use scarce Patriot PAC-3 or SAMP/T Aster 30 missiles to defeat them.”

The RM-48Us do not have correction, are rather inaccurate, and their warhead is not designed to destroy well-hardened targets, experts said. In spite of this, during strikes on densely populated areas, with low accuracy, civilians and civilian objects become the victims of this class of missile, especially in cities closer to the front lines. 

Air defense shot down 92% of drones, 53% of missiles in May

This tactic is not new. Russia made extensive, similar use of old 5V55 surface-to-air missiles as improvised ballistic weapons. Ukraine did the same with its own 5V55s at various points of the full-scale invasion, especially during the opening phase. 

The difference is now Russia’s ever-escalating campaign of drone and missile bombardments of Ukrainian cities, with each month setting new records by the number of weapons used. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Moscow launched a total of 8,361 long-range weapons in May, including 8,150 drones and 211 missiles.

Nevertheless, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is claiming to be holding firm and climbing towards its target of 95% of all weapons intercepted. 

According to their May figures, they came close, with 92% interceptions, including 91.73% for drones and 53% for missiles.

During strikes, Ukrainian armed forces regularly report shooting down the majority of Russian cruise missiles headed their way. The ballistic missiles remain the biggest problem. 

Iskander-M component producers remain unsanctioned

While there are several initiatives under way to increase Ukraine’s anti-ballistic arsenal, these may take years to unfold, given the difficulty and cost of ramping up interceptor production. The US, as the biggest producer, only makes 550 PAC-3 MSE interceptors per year, with a goal to raise production to 2,000 in the coming years. 

There is another alternative: to choke off Russia’s missile production through additional sanctions. The main company building 9M723 Iskander missiles is Konstruktorskoye Bureau Mashinostroyeniya, which has been sanctioned by many countries for years. 

However, of the 44 component developers for the Iskander-M listed on GUR’s website, 12 are not sanctioned by any country other than Ukraine. These include:  

• Ural Factory RTI: makes rubber materials, some of which are used in missiles
• Factory named after Morozov: makes solid fuel for Iskanders
• PSB Technologies: makes modules for producing the EW-resistant Kometa antennas
• Pantes: also makes modules for producing the EW-resistant Kometa antennas
• Metalist Plant: makes accelerometers for missiles’ internal navigation systems
• Moscow Sapfir Plant: makes optics, including photo diodes for missiles
• Televidenie Research Institute: makes optical cameras for controlling missiles
• OKB Planeta: makes microstrips for circuit boards
• Almaz Fazotron: makes electronics that go into missiles
• Research Institute of Electronic Instruments: makes automatic control systems
• Tri-D: makes specialized fabrics, some of which are used in missiles
• Penzenskiy Factory of Precision Instruments: makes onboard control instruments

On or just before 1 June, the 422nd Separate Regiment of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces blew up a Russian truck near Yelyseivka, in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in occupied southern Ukraine. The truck burned to the ground 23 km southeast of Chernihivka, one of three main bases for Russian field armies in the south.

The location is the story, mapper and analyst Clément Molin explained. "Hitting some trucks on key roads is something," Molin wrote, "but hitting the trucks when they reach the tactical level positions is as much important." The idea is to unravel Russian supply lines across the logistical zone extending around 200 km from the gray zone to the main strategic railheads.

The strike fits inside a Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign that destroyed an average of 463 Russian trucks per day across 30 May, 31 May, and 1 June — more than five times Russia's average daily truck losses since widening its war on Ukraine in February 2022. The Ukrainian General Staff counted 483 destroyed Russian trucks on 30 May, another 524 on 31 May, and 384 on 1 June. But Yelyseivka points at a different layer of that campaign.

Ukraine's AI-assisted drones — including the Hornet, built by US firm Swift Beat — have been prowling the sky over occupied Ukraine, hunting Russian cargo vehicles along the major highways at distances of 150 km or more from the gray zone. The east-to-west M-14, threading from southern Russia through occupied Mariupol, and the south-to-north H-20, connecting Mariupol to occupied Donetsk, have been the main hunting grounds. Operator-guided strike drones like the Bulava, made by Ukraine's DeViro and fielded by the same 422nd Regiment, hit shorter-range targets in the same logistical zone. Together they have shredded Russian supply lines across the south.

But the drones aren't just hunting along the main roads. They're also finding and hitting Russian trucks much closer to where those trucks are headed.

Near versus far

To be fair, some Ukrainian planners prefer deeper strikes. "Operations on logistics routes at great depth have their profound sense," explained one unnamed officer from the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps, which oversees part of the counterlogistics effort.

"Why? Because the farther we work from the front line, the larger the trucks are, the more concentrated the cargo being transported is and the less protected it is," the officer told Ukrainian news organization NV. "To protect it, the enemy must stretch air observation lines and so on. In other words, they simply cannot secure all these logistics routes."

"That's exactly why we operate as deep as we can."

But there's some advantage to closer strikes, especially in occupied southern Ukraine. "Only few towns remain to host four [field] armies that are on the front and their logistics and command posts," Molin explained. Those towns—Chernihivka, Kamianka and Rozivka—sit astride a railway. But trains don't deliver all the supplies. Trucks, hundreds of them every day, roll into Chernihivka, Kamianka and Rozivka.

The towns are logistical chokepoints. Maybe with a lot of planning and extra allotments of gasoline, Russian logisticians could find alternate routes for the supply convoys currently coming under fire from Hornet and Bulava drones along the M-14 and H-20. But truck drivers have no choice but to converge on Chernihivka, Kamianka and Rozivka in order to finally deliver their cargo.

Ukrainian strike planners know the trucks are coming. Posting AI-assisted drones over that handful of towns could prevent supplies from traveling the last few miles to Russia's front-line forces in the south. "This is this kind of logistical chokepoint that Ukraine will try to target more," Molin wrote.

If the strike on a truck just outside Chernihivka on 1 June is any indication, Ukraine's drones have reached a layer of the Russian rear the Kremlin used to assume was out of reach.

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Russia is losing so many trucks it’s now eyeing Cold War scrap

On 30 May, Ukrainian forces released nighttime imagery of a drone team launching Fire Point FP-1/2 one-way attack drones from a civilian-style tractor-trailer truck modified to carry at least three of the fixed-wing, rocket-assisted drones on metal racks.

Four days later on 3 June, Russian forces released daytime imagery of a drone strike on one of these Ukrainian truck launchers. The Russian drone scored a direct hit. The Ukrainian truck exploded.

It's not totally clear when the Russian strike took place. That is to say, it's not clear the Russians knew to look for the Ukrainian truck launcher because of the 30 May imagery. But the apparent sequence of events, a revealing image of a special Ukrainian capability followed by a Russian attack on the same capability, is sure to raise eyebrows.

Did Ukrainian troops unnecessarily give away the details of their truck launcher?

The $50,000 FP-1/2 family is a mainstay of the Ukrainian deep strike campaign, and includes both pre-programmed and operator-guided variants. Ukrainian drone-maker Fire Point reportedly churns out thousands of the FP-1/2s every month. And every month, Ukrainian drone units launch the propeller-driven drones at Russian air defenses, headquarters, drone bases and warships.

The FP-1 motors as far as 1,000 km with a 100-kg warhead. The FP-2 trades away fuel in order to carry a 160-kg warhead, and as a consequence ranges just 200 km. Both variants launch without a runway, boosting into the air thanks to a quick-burning rocket that jettisons after a few seconds.

Rocket-assisted launch opens up all kinds of non-traditional operational models. Drone teams can launch FP-1/2 from any roadside or field. To stay mobile and unpredictable and complicate Russian effort to strike the launchers, the Ukrainians launch at least some of their FP-1/2s from the modified civilian-style tractor-trailers that they revealed in that May imagery. The trailers open along the side, revealing at least three FP-1/2s on cradles.

To launch an FP-1/2, usually under the cover of darkness, operators first spin up the drone's two-cylinder engine. Then they trigger the underslung rocket that boosts the drone to cruising speed before falling off.

Mobile launchers

It was always apparent that FP-1/2 launch teams traveled in trucks. After all, most drone launch teams on both sides of Russia's 52-month wider war on Ukraine travel in trucks. In that sense, the new imagery of the truck launcher revealed nothing new.

The new information was the trailer's exact appearance. That's a possible security breach because both sides in the wider war deploy AI-assisted drones that can be trained to autonomously spot and strike certain targets. Coders feed the drones' algorithm with images of preferred targets. The more clear images, the more accurate the targeting.

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Russia is losing so many trucks it’s now eyeing Cold War scrap

In this sense, the May reveal of the FP-1/2 launcher represented an unnecessary risk for the Ukrainians. Even if the Russians already knew the FP-1/2 teams traveled in a certain type of civilian-style truck, they need a certain volume of imagery in order to train their AI drones to hit the trucks. The May reveal could only help the Russians and hurt the Ukrainians.

To be sure, the Russians are increasingly motivated to hunt Ukrainian teams before they can launch their drones. Russian air defenses are collapsing under the pressure of relentless drone strikes, leaving more Russian troops, bases and supply convoys—and yes, any surviving air defenses—exposed to drone attack.

Striking the launchers can be difficult, however, especially when the launchers are mobile, indistinct and mostly travel at night. Even after the 30 May reveal and the 3 June strike, Ukrainian FP-1/2 launch teams remain mobile and nocturnal. But they're no longer as indistinct as they once were.

During their overnight drone strike near St. Petersburg, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces blasted a Russian warship, the corvette Boykiy, at the Kronstadt Naval Base, the official HQ of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. 

The strike was part of a wider attack, which also caused a fire at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, 17 kilometers away from Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s flagship international economic forum on opening day.

A video posted by Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi showed two drones striking the ship from above—the second drone shows a big blaze erupting around the bridge.  

"The corvette was deflowered by the birds of the 1st Separate Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces,” Madyar wrote. 

The video shows that drones appear to strike the center of the corvette—exactly where some of the vessel’s most expensive electronics are located, including its Furke-2 airborne surveillance radar, Monument-A guided missile radar, navigational systems, electronic warfare systems, and fire control.

US intelligence company Vantor published satellite photos of the aftermath, showing fire crews working to control the fires on the ship with high-pressure water cannons. The bridge and conning tower are blackened and appear to be partially collapsed. The water used to put out the fire could also inflict further damage to sensitive components.

The affected systems are problematic to get working on this class of vessel even when it’s not engulfed in flame, according to retired Ukrainian naval officer and analyst Pavlo Lakiychuk.

Specifically, the radar and comms systems are not compatible and it’s hard to get them to play well together, Lakiychuk said. While the Boykiy’s hull probably remained intact, repairing these systems after a strike and recalibrating them will take a lot of time, money, and effort. 

"Every repair takes up human resources and financial resources that are needed for other goals in a war," he said.

Some analysts have gone further, saying the ship is as good as destroyed in the economic sense: that the cumulative damage would make no sense to repair—except for propaganda value.

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Contents

• Drones ignite Russian fuel hub on Gulf of Finland as Putin’s flagship forum opens
  1. Armaments and technical issues
  2. Escorting the shadow fleet
  3. As UGV adoption soars, Ukraine must write the playbook for saving soldiers’ lives
  4. Newly-announced Litavr interceptor is a model microcosm of Ukraine’s drone innovation programs
  5. Ukraine’s drones got bigger warheads. A Russian corvette in the Baltic just found out.

Drones ignite Russian fuel hub on Gulf of Finland as Putin’s flagship forum opens

Armaments and technical issues

The Boykiy (Russian for “lively” or “perky”) is one of four Stereguschiy-class corvettes serving in the Baltic Fleet, created under the Project 20380 program in Russia. As warships go, it is not very old, first being floated in 2011. 

At 105 meters long, displacing 2,250 tons when fully laden, it can reach speeds of 27 knots and has a range of 4,000 nautical miles. Vessels of its class are armed with Kh-35 subsonic anti-ship missiles, the basis from which Ukraine developed its own Neptune-class missiles that sank Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva, in 2022. Stereguschiy corvettes are also armed with 100-millimeter guns and Redoubt air defense systems.

While threatening, the vessel has multiple shortcomings. In addition to their electronics compatibility issues, Stereguschiy corvettes also suffer from inefficient engines and propulsion systems, Lakiychuk added. Russia used to rely on Ukraine to build ship engines in Mykolaiv, but their supply dried up after Russia invaded Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts in 2014. 

These technical issues are why ships of this class spend a lot of time near at Kronstadt near St. Petersburg, instead of Kaliningrad where the majority of the Baltic Fleet is based, Lakiychuk said. According to Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, the Boykiy has been at the Kronstadt Naval Base since February. 

This could explain why the ship was in dry dock at the time of the attack. Ukrainian forces used the opportunity to strike when most of its safety features such as fire suppression systems were likely shut off and its trained crews not present, as pointed out by defense analyst Jaroslaw Wolski.

Escorting the shadow fleet

Before coming in for maintenance, the Boykiy “had an enchanting history of travel and adventure along NATO borders, accompanying the shadow fleet,” Madyar wrote. 

This shadow fleet and its military escorts serve two major functions for Russia. The first is exporting oil and gas, which are Moscow’s main financial lifeline, sustaining the state and its ongoing invasion.

The second is the escalation of hybrid warfare against NATO. That includes surveillance of NATO countries' territories, sabotage of undersea cables, launching drones over critical infrastructure across Europe, and electronic warfare like radio jamming and GPS spoofing, which affects allied civilian and military vessels. 

Ukraine’s successful strikes on the Kronstadt Naval Base, taking a Baltic Fleet vessel out of commission for a long time, demonstrated the long reach of Kyiv’s deep strike drones like the FP-1, and served as a rebuke to Russia’s hybrid operations against Europe. 

Madyar related the strike to the Kronstadt rebellion, an insurrection of Soviet sailors and civilians against the Bolshevik government in 1921, ”a slap in the face of the dictatorial regime.”

The Russian military keeps tens of thousands of old trucks in storage. It might need them soon. This spring, Ukrainian forces launched a counterlogistics campaign targeting Russian trucks, vans and other cargo vehicles across the logistical zone stretching 200 km behind the disputed gray zone.

The campaign of AI drone strikes is intensifying. And now the Russians are losing potentially hundreds of trucks every day. Far more than they can immediately replace with new production. While Russian ground forces possess tens of thousands of cargo vehicles, and buy thousands of new ones every year, they're currently on track to lose thousands per month.

If truck losses continue at the current rate, or get worse, the Russians may have no choice but to begin doing for trucks what they've long done for tanks: pull very old vehicles out of long-term storage and do their best to refurbish them for continued use.

It could be tough. "Russia has an immense number of stored trucks," analyst Jompy noted. They placed the number of old Cold War cargo vehicles in storage in Russia at 40,000 or 50,000. That's more trucks than most armies have in their entire inventories, but it's also just 100 days' worth of trucks at the current rate of loss across the logistical zone.

Worse for Russian logisticians, most of the stored trucks have been parked "for decades without proper maintenance," according to Jompy. "Most are junk."

How long Russia's current truck inventory lasts, and how urgently it may need to tap reserves of rusty older vehicles, depends on exactly how many trucks Ukrainian drones are knocking out every day.

Lots of losses

The Ukrainian general staff reported 483 destroyed Russian trucks on 30 May, another 524 on 31 May and 384 on 1 June. The average across the past three days is 463 trucks. That's more than five times Russia's average daily truck losses since widening its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

According to the Ukrainian defense ministry, Russia lost nearly 7,000 trucks in May, around 6,500 in April and slightly more than 6,000 in March. Cargo vehicle losses in previous months were much lower, including just 4,000 or so per month between December and February. That makes sense, as the Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign began in earnest as the weather warmed and the winter fog lifted over the Russian logistical zone this spring.

The intensifying drone raids on Russian supply lines out to a distance of 200 km marks a strategic pivot for Ukraine. As recently as late last year, Ukrainian leaders were under scrutiny for focusing their drone strikes on Russian infantry in the gray zone as well as on largely symbolic targets deep inside Russia. That bifurcated focus risked neglecting the logistical middle zone.

But that was before the spring pivot. Now the middle zone and its supply lines are the main focus of Ukraine's best new drones, including Swift Beat Hornets and other inexpensive fixed-wing drones with jam-resistant AI-targeting. "A battlefield runs on logistics," the Ukrainian defense ministry conceded. "Ukraine is making sure Russia's does not."

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Ukrainian drones now reach so deep that Russia closed its main highway to Crimea

Electronic warfare might not save Russia's logistics, given how many of the Ukrainian drones ranging across the logistical zone have self-contained AI for targeting and don't need a low-lag connection to a distant operator in order to strike their targets.

Russia can fight back by deploying more air defenses along the main supply routes. The problem there is that Ukrainian drones are also targeting the air defenses, hitting hundreds of them in just the last year.

The Russians could also erect anti-drone nets over the most vulnerable highways. But there are hundreds of miles of roads, and nets are fragile.

Most likely, the Kremlin will try a little of everything to keep supplies and reinforcements flowing to the front-line regiments. The all-of-the-above logistical effort could very well include refurbishing—or at least trying to refurbish—a whole lot of very old trucks.

Russia captured its smallest monthly slice of Ukrainian territory in years in May, according to RFE/RL's Russian service, Radio Svoboda, citing the Ukrainian mapping project DeepState. The slowdown has tilted the battlefield, with Ukraine clawing back ground for the first time since 2023. Analysts credit Ukraine's drone advances and Russia's mounting losses, while warning that Moscow has adapted before.

A record-low month

DeepState recorded just 14 km² seized by Russia across Ukraine in May, RFE/RL reported. That is the lowest monthly total in years of grinding advance. Analysts caution that the count is imperfect. The front is now a wide gray zone where neither side holds clear control, so figures shift with the methodology used.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on 28 May that Russia's 2026 advance has slowed sharply. From January through 26 May, Russia took 104 km², plus 628 in an infiltration zone its troops entered but do not control. Over the same span in 2025, Russia seized 1,619 km². For the first time since 2023, Ukraine reclaimed more ground than Russia, ISW analyst George Barros told The Hill.

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126 km² in February, 245 in January, some 630 last November — Russia’s gains drop while its attacks hold steady, Deep State says

Where Russia is still pushing

Russia keeps advancing slowly in Donetsk Oblast, its main axis. It is pressing west and north of Pokrovsk, where it has massed more than 100,000 troops. It is also attacking Kostiantynivka, the southern end of a belt of fortress cities, and pushing from the east toward Sloviansk at the belt's northern end. Ukrainian forces ran counterattacks of their own.

They drove Russian troops from Stepnohirsk south of Zaporizhzhia, and cleared areas in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and around Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast.

What changed

Ukrainian, Western, and Russian sources all describe a shift in the balance. In winter, Russia lost access to Starlink satellite terminals, badly degrading its frontline communications. Ukraine, meanwhile, is expanding its drone production and use, and appears to have reached a new level of drone use in the kill zone, the lethal band near the front.

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Ukraine launches “Logistics Lockdown” program with 3 million for middle-strike drones against Russian rear

The expansion includes sharply scaled-up midstrikes and drone hits on Russian rear positions 100 to 150 kilometers behind the line.

US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll called Ukraine's Delta battlefield network incredible at a congressional hearing, saying it links every drone, sensor, and firing platform into one system. 

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Ukraine’s “Logistics Lockdown” sets all-time daily record since full-scale war began

Russia's manpower problem

Russia is finding it harder to recruit, even as its losses keep mounting. Ukraine's military openly aims to drain Russian manpower faster than Moscow can replace it. 

The head of Britain's GCHQ signals intelligence agency, Anne Keast-Butler, said on 27 May that Russia has lost nearly half a million soldiers killed in the war. 

Ukraine has 6 to 9 months to seize the initiative and strengthen its hand in possible talks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a 31 May interview with CBS News. He said Russia began losing momentum in December 2025 under heavy losses, opening a window for negotiations. 

"They couldn't occupy territories more during one month than they lose during the same month," he said.

Russia's third (or fourth) Oreshnik strike on Ukraine on Saturday gave us more hints about the ballistic missile's capabilities—and serious limitations.

The non-nuclear missile, based on a nuclear-capable RS-26, is fast, powerful, and impossible to intercept. But it's also expensive, rare, inaccurate, and potentially unreliable.

It's clearer than ever that the 40-ton, approximately $30 million Oreshnik is "a terror weapon designed to intimidate," to quote Kyiv-based consultant Jimmy Rushton. "It's not a practical or cost-effective weapon."

But even as a terror weapon, the Oreshnik has so far failed.

Ukrainian analysts underlined Rushton's assessment when they inspected the wreckage from the Oreshnik that dropped its 36 separate warheads on Bila Tserkva, around 80 km south of Kyiv, on Saturday night. They confirmed that the warheads are inert. They're filled with concrete instead of explosives, possibly because explosive warheads would disintegrate during the hot, fast terminal phase of flight.

Where the inert warheads struck is equally telling. There is a valuable target near Bila Tserkva: an airfield where the Ukrainian air force stores derelict Sukhoi Su-24 bombers. But the Oreshnik apparently missed the airfield and struck a garage complex, instead, inflicting no casualties.

But the biggest insight into the Oreshnik's capability, or lack thereof, is the single security-camera video depicting what may be a second Oreshnik falling onto Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast, also on Saturday night.

While it's possible the objects that streaked down on Donetsk that night were discarded stages from the Oreshnik that hit Bila Tserkva (the Donetsk impact was just seconds before the Bila Tserkva impact, after all), it's also possible Russia launched two Oreshniks in quick succession.

If so, it's clear one of them failed to even reach free Ukraine. And the other apparently hit nothing of major military or symbolic value. Maybe, just maybe, the Oreshnik isn't as terrifying as the Russians hope it is.

Impossible to intercept

It's true Ukraine doesn't possess any weapons that can intercept an Oreshnik mid-flight. But how much does that matter as long as the missile is rare—Russia has launched just three or four of them since late 2024—and tends to inflict little or no serious damage, mostly owing to its apparent inaccuracy?

Growing evidence of the Oreshnik's inaccuracy and possible unreliability shouldn't surprise missile expert Fabian Hoffmann. "The employment of the missile, both in November 2024 when it was first used and in the recent strike, suggests limited projectile accuracy," Hoffmann wrote following the second Oreshnik strike on Ukraine on 9 January.

The Oreshnik is inaccurate, it seems, because its 36 warheads lack any ability to maneuver. The "re-entry vehicles are not individually guided," Hoffmann explained. "Instead, they follow a gravity-driven descent after separation from the post-boost vehicle."

"As a result, Oreshnik has very limited utility against most point targets, including individual buildings, air defense sites or enemy launcher assets," Hoffmann continued. "That said, the missile may have some effectiveness against certain area targets."

But even the Oreshnik that apparently targeted an aviation repair plant in Lviv in January—a plant that overhauls Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters—didn't actually kill anyone, and didn't have any obvious effect on the ability of the Ukrainian air force to keep its MiG-29s in the air.

Maybe the Oreshnik would be a real threat, or a more fearsome terror weapon, if Russia could afford to fire more than a handful of the missiles every year. "Grouped Oreshnik strikes involving several missiles and hundreds of submunitions could seriously threaten large NATO air bases such as Ramstein [in Germany]," Hoffmann mused.

"This assessment is not incorrect," Hoffmann concluded. "However, given the high cost of each Oreshnik missile, which, while unknown, likely exceeds the price of more common shorter-range ballistic missiles in Russia's arsenal by a substantial margin, this type of attack would be expensive. Unless it causes damage that cannot be repaired quickly, it may not be very cost-effective."

All that is to say, Russia's concrete-filled terror missile is getting less terrifying each time one of them falls impotently onto Ukraine.

Moscow’s missile massacres are deadly. However, the scalability ceiling may be lower than Russian messaging suggests, at least in the short to medium term. The upper limits of these attacks are dictated by bottlenecks in production and launch platform availability. 

Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week promised “systematic strikes” against the Ukrainian capital, accompanying the threat with a massive barrage of over 90 missiles and over 600 drones, killing two people in Kyiv and injuring over 80. Ten days prior, Russia hit Ukraine with 56 missiles and over 700 drones, killing 24 people in Kyiv. 

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have been steadily growing in volume since 2024 and are hitting new records. Inexpensive one-way attack drones constitute the vast majority of their mass. 

Yet as Ukraine gets better at dealing with Shaheds, the Russians are increasing missile production, Federico Borsari, a defense fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Euromaidan Press. 

The Russians are especially focused on ballistic missile capabilities, given the global dearth of ballistic interceptors, which is especially acute for Ukraine. Yet while Russia’s ability to inflict damage with missiles remains formidable, analysts question how quickly the Kremlin can increase production of its missile arsenal and unleash it against Ukrainian cities. 

"No radical increase in the use of missile weapons in proportion to production has been observed,” wrote Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow with the National Institute for Strategic Studies.  

"It is also unlikely that the Russian Federation will be able to target all current capabilities only at Kyiv, no matter how hard they try.”

How many missiles does Russia have? 

According to the General Intelligence Directorate (GUR), Russia can produce just over 300 missiles per month. That includes: 

Ballistic missiles

• Iskander-M ballistic missile — up to 60 units
• Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile — up to 10 units

Cruise missiles

• Kh-101 air-launched cruise missile — up to 70 units
• Kalibr sea-launched cruise missile — up to 25 units
• Iskander-K cruise missile variant — up to 10 units

Repurposed anti-ship and other missiles

• Kh-35 air-launched missile — about 20 units
• Kh-69 air-launched missile — up to 5 units
• Kh-32 air-launched cruise missile — up to 8 units
• Oniks anti-ship cruise missile — up to 5 units;
• Zircon hypersonic cruise missile — up to 3 units

• RM-48U strike missiles — up to 40 units
• Kh-29/31/35/58/59 — up to 50 units

Russia also acquires short-range ballistic missiles from North Korea. 

Furthermore, Russia has stockpiles within each category. GUR estimated in early May that there are up to 460 Kalibrs, up to 230 Zircons, up to 200 9M723 Iskanders, up to 120 Kh-101s and up to 100 Kinzhals in reserve.

While the Russians need to maintain reserves in case NATO countries get really serious, they can dip into them if they want to do the occasional oversized barrage on Kyiv or other cities. 

Production bottlenecks

Can Russia significantly increase these production numbers? They are certainly trying. US open source analyst John Ridge expects that the threat ”will escalate as Russia continues to expand production of both ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.” 

While Russia produces more cruise missiles per month, evidence suggests (and many observers agree) that Moscow is trying to shift emphasis towards its ballistic arsenal.

However, there’s likely a ceiling on how much Russia can boost its production rates, at least in the short to medium term. 

“It will be difficult for the Russian Federation to increase the production of these weapons many times over, both due to financial constraints and a lack of qualified personnel,” Bielieskov wrote.

There are tradeoffs to be made. Justin Bronk, a Senior Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute told Euromaidan Press that “there are many common parts and even entire electronic printed circuit board sections that are used on both certain cruise missile and certain ballistic missile types.” 

“So in some cases an attempt to increase output of one will result in a decrease in possible production output of the other in any given month/period.”

Ballistic missiles are more expensive

Ballistic missiles generally cost more than cruise missiles—the components and engineering requirements are more demanding. It’s likely that shifting towards ballistics means a smaller output in absolute numbers. However, this may be worthwhile for Moscow, as Ukrainian air defense is less likely to shoot them down due to the global shortage of Patriot interceptors. 

Defense Express estimated relative costs in 2022. In that analysis, if a Kalibr or the Iskander-K cruise missile cost up to $1 million, a more advanced Kh-101 cruise missile could cost up to $1.2 million, while a 9M723 ballistic Iskander would cost up to $2 million and an Oniks would cost up to $3 million.

Estimating the actual costs is harder but possible by looking at Russia’s procurement orders during the full-scale invasion. These would put Iskander-Ks at roughly $1.5 million, Kalibrs at around $2 million, and Kh-101s at up to $2.4 million per unit. 

Ballistic missiles are pricier. The Kolomna Machine Building Design Bureau’s orders for ballistic missiles in 2024-2025 suggest that 9M723 Iskanders with cluster and high-explosive warheads are worth around $3 million per unit, though there are versions with cheaper warheads in the mix.

Launch platform bottlenecks 

Production costs aren’t the only bottleneck on Russian missile strikes. Launcher availability is finite. This is especially true for seaborne and airborne platforms. 

Sea

Ukraine has been whittling down and harassing the Black Sea Fleet over more than four years. For example, the frigate Admiral Makarov was struck multiple times, starting in 2022—an April attack took out its launchers, according to the Ministry of Defense. 

The Askold, a Karakurt-class corvette and a Buyan-class corvette were put out of action in fall 2023. Missile corvette Ivanovets followed suit in January 2024. A Karakurt-class corvette, Tsiklon, was destroyed in Crimea in May 2024. A Buyan-class corvette was hit but not destroyed in 2025. 

Ukraine also took out a submarine, the Rostov on Don in 2023 and damaged a Varshavyanka-class sub in December. Retired Ukrainian navy officer and war analyst Pavlo Lakiychuk told Euromaidan Press that subs are the most treacherous seaborne Kalibr launch platforms because it’s impossible to predict where their missiles will be coming from. 

Most recently, Exilenova+ reported a 7 May strike on a naval base in Kaspiysk on the Caspian Sea, hitting a small Karakurt missile boat. Lakiychuk said that Caspian flotilla vessels aren't actively used for missile strikes on Ukraine but very well could.

All these attacks mean the Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian flotilla have fewer platforms to launch Kalibr missiles, Bielieskov said. Lakiychuk took a more cautious tone, pointing out that some ships, especially missile frigates, have not been damaged beyond repair and have lived to terrorize another day.

Air

Air platforms also come with their own limitations. Ukraine took out multiple Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers during 2025’s Operation Spiderweb, and continues to hunt Russian aircraft. Over the weekend, the Unmanned Systems Forces reported destroying two Tu-142 maritime patrol planes adapted from the Tu-95. 

But wear and tear is an even bigger problem than Ukrainian drones. The remaining Tu-95s and Tu-160s are wearing out to the point where most can carry only one fourth to one-sixth of their maximum payload, Lakiychuk said. “If you equip them with their full array of missiles, they might not complete the flight.” 

“The Russian Long Range Aviation fleet can surge but at a cost of reducing the overall life expectancy remaining for the Tu-95MS(M) fleet, for which there is currently no viable replacement,” Bronk said.

This entropy is also affecting MiG-31s, Russia’s key platforms for launching Kinzhal ballistic missiles. Defense Express wrote that serial production stopped in 1993 and while Russia had up to 150 airframes in storage, many of them were likely used for parts. The limiting factor is their engine, which can only do 300 flight hours between overhaul cycles. 

“The bottleneck on launch capacity on any given day is the number of available MiG-31K launch aircraft,” Bronk added.

Ground

Russia has fewer problems with ballistic missiles launched from ground-based platforms. Bronk said that Iskander-M systems for launching 9M720 and 9M723 are “more plentiful in terms of potential launch capacity than the missiles to fire from them.” 

This may change if Ukrainians can step up their game hunting Russian transporter erector launchers (TELs), as they appear to be doing. Over the weekend, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces reported that Ukrainian drones took out an Iskander launch vehicle at a military airfield in Taganrog. 

Earlier, in February, Ukrainian Flamingo missiles hit a Russian Iskander factory, destroying an electroplating and stamping shop, according to analysts from the CyberBoroshno OSINT project.

“For some systems like the Iskander, TELs are now under threat from Ukrainian middle strike drones more than in the past,” Borsari said.

“So it is possible that Russians are taking extra care now and limit as much as possible the exposure to Ukrainian drones, which can impact the frequency of use.” 

He added: “That said, I think that Russian forces still retain a fairly good amount of launch platforms for missiles.”

Peaks and troughs

Ukrainian residents know this better than most. From their point of view, no matter what bottlenecks Russia has, the chance of being blown up or having your home destroyed is always hanging overhead. After the May 24 mass strike, Ukraine’s Recovery Ministry said it received about 1,000 applications for housing compensations in Kyiv alone. 

As Ukrainian blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko with Ukrainian outlet Informatsyinyi Sprotyv, who tracks Russian attacks, wrote on his Telegram account: no one should ignore air alert warnings. 

That said, the numbers of missiles recorded over the past several months doesn’t show a linear increase. Rather, Moscow seems to go through peaks and troughs in how many missiles it fires at Ukraine.

February was one such peak. Close to 300 missiles were used, including a record 121 ballistic missiles (including North Korean KN-23s), as well as over 130 cruise missiles including Kh-101s, Kalibrs, and Iskander cruise variants.

March and April were tamer in comparison. Russia fired less than half of that amount of ballistic missiles and roughly half as many cruise missiles during each. 

And then came May. It would appear that the Russians either had time to build up their missile stockpiles, as in the first three weeks and change, over 150 missiles were used, primarily on May 14 and May 24. The number of ballistic missiles as a percentage of the total soared. 

Most of the cruise missiles were reported shot down. Only a minority of ballistic missiles were dealt with, according to Kovalenko. 

All of the above suggests two things. 

The first is that for all of Lavrov’s threats of decimating Kyiv’s high-value targets, the Russians are constrained by reality. Most likely, the truly big mass missile strikes will have to be spaced apart, with time to build up. In between, Russia will continue to hammer away at Ukraine with thousands and thousands of Shahed drones. 

The second is that once the big attacks do hit, they are going to kill people, many of whom are civilians—without anti-ballistic defenses, Ukraine will have limited options to stop them. While they are certainly not going to raze Kyiv to the ground in a storm of fire, damage will be sustained and people will die.

Ukrainian drone-maker Skyfall has upgraded its iconic Vampire bomber drone to resist Russian electronic warfare. Now the six-rotor drone can not only fly through Russian jamming. It can also attack the jammers themselves.

That matters now because the jammers are some of the last things standing between Ukraine's drones and the Russian air defenses they hunt. Ukrainian forces have destroyed more Russian air defense systems this spring than at any point in the war—81 confirmed since 1 March, by the General Staff's count, with April running roughly double the previous autumn's pace. A drone that shrugs off jamming can go after the jammers that were protecting everything else. Kill the jammer, and the next target gets easier.

Following the upgrades, a Vampire recently found and bombed a rare Russian Borisoglebsk-2 tracked jamming vehicle, likely destroying it with several grenades that punched right through the Borisoglebsk-2's thin top armor.

A complete Borisoglebsk-2 complex is estimated to cost as much as $200 million. Russia has built only a few dozen of them since 2015, and Ukrainian forces have knocked out at least six since 2023. "I think this is the most painful operation carried out against the Russians in a single instance," a Skyfall spokesperson said, somewhat exaggerating.

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Ukraine wrapped the occupied south in three layers of drones. Russian trucks are burning

More strikes on rare and expensive Russian jammers could be coming, now that the Vampires are resistant to the effects of their electronic noise broadcasts. Blowing up more Russian jammers would hasten the wider collapse of Russian air defenses resulting from Ukraine's intensive campaign of drone strikes that began around a year ago.

The standard Vampire is a heavy hexacopter with a payload of around 15 kg and a thermal camera that allows it to operate at night. Also known as "Baba Yagas" by the Russians, a reference to a mythical night witch, the Vampires have been hounding Russian forces since the first year of Russia's wider war on Ukraine.

With their payload of multiple grenades and enough endurance to patiently hunt Russian troops for hours at a time, the Vampires are among the most efficient killers over the disputed gray zone. With better batteries and satellite communications, they've been able to range 45 km to bombard troops before they even reach the gray zone.

Vulnerable to jamming

But the oldest Vampires are vulnerable to Russian jamming. These Vampires are directly controlled by human pilots who connect to their drones via line-of-sight radio. It's a fairly simple matter to interrupt that radio signal with radio noise.

To mitigate the effects of this jamming, Skyfall has added redundant navigation and communication systems to the latest Vampires. The firm replaced the old radio receiver with a Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna that has multiple receivers. It's not impossible to jam all of the receivers, but it's hard.

And in the event the Russians do fully jam the CRPA, cutting off a Vampire from its distant human operator, the drone can switch to a self-contained terrain-matching navigation system that scans the landscape passing beneath it and matches it to a pre-loaded flight path. Terrain-matching navigation might not be as precise as direct human control, but it's jam-proof.

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Ukrainian supply robots are blocking Russia’s plan to starve Kostiantynivka

Now the new Vampire "is completely resistant to Russian electronic warfare," the Skyfall spokesperson said, again exaggerating somewhat.

Resistance to jamming doesn't just help a Vampire bomb Russian jammers, it also safeguards the drone during other mission profiles. As the spokesperson noted, Vampires aren't solely bombers anymore. They also drop mines along Russian assault lanes and, increasingly, fly supply missions where they drop food, water, ammunition, batteries and medical supplies on Ukrainian positions instead of dropping live grenades on Russian positions.

As a supply drone, the Vampire keeps human logisticians off the dangerous roads and "helps ensure greater safety for personnel." It's not alone, of course. More unmanned ground vehicles are also plying Ukraine's riskiest supply routes.

Reports of a Ukrainian strike in occupied Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, on 22 May, have prompted conflicting accounts about the target and reported civilian casualties, with Ukraine describing a strike on Russian military infrastructure and Russian occupation authorities saying a college dormitory was hit.

The incident has become part of a broader discussion inside Ukraine about long-range strikes, verification limits in occupied territory, and how civilian harm claims are assessed when access is restricted and narratives are controlled by Russia.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces carried out strikes in the Starobilsk area targeting a command position linked to Russia’s elite “Rubicon” drone unit, which operates drones used in attacks against Ukrainian military positions and civilian infrastructure.

Russian occupation authorities said a college dormitory was hit in the same night and reported that more than 20 people were killed, most of them students.

The relationship between the competing accounts has not been independently verified. Available information does not establish whether the reported military target was located inside, adjacent to, or separate from the buildings described as a dormitory by Russian authorities.

Ukrainian media reviewed online traces of reported victims

An investigation by Ukrainian outlet Realna Hazeta reviewed social media profiles, memorial posts, and statements from relatives and classmates, suggesting that some of the reported dead were students.

The reporting cross-referenced names published by Russian sources with publicly available online profiles and commemoration activity, finding that some of the individuals correspond to students at the Starobilsk Pedagogical College.

These online materials can help corroborate identity and community recognition, but they do not independently confirm the full circumstances of death or the exact conditions inside the damaged buildings.

Access to Starobilsk remains tightly controlled by Russian occupation authorities, limiting independent verification on the ground. Reporting from the area is constrained by restricted access, curated site visits, and reliance on information released by occupying structures.

Reuters reported from Starobilsk on 24 May on a media facility trip organised by the Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but said they were “not able to independently verify what happened.”

Russian messaging and controlled access reported

Russian authorities and occupation-linked channels quickly shaped the aftermath of the Starobilsk strike through coordinated messaging and tightly managed media access, according to Realna Hazeta. 

The reporting says official narratives emphasized civilian casualties and framed the incident within calls for retaliation, alongside organised public mourning events in Russia.

The investigation also notes the use of selectively released footage and repeated references to victims as “children,” as well as closely supervised visits for foreign correspondents, which limited independent verification of conditions on the ground.

Access restrictions limit independent verification

Ukraine has not disputed that military operations took place in the Starobilsk area on that day but maintains that its forces target Russian military infrastructure in line with international humanitarian law. 

It has accused Russian authorities of shaping narratives around the aftermath for propaganda purposes, saying that information released from occupied Starobilsk is being selectively presented and amplified to support broader wartime messaging rather than provide a complete or independently verifiable account of what occurred on the ground.

These claims from Russian occupation authorities are viewed in the context of a documented pattern since 2014 in which similar accusations of Ukrainian strikes on civilian areas in occupied Donbas were repeatedly made without supporting evidence and were not corroborated by independent investigations or verifiable reporting.

Unintentional civilian harm cannot be excluded

At the same time, Ukrainian journalists stress that skepticism about source reliability does not negate the possibility of civilian casualties. 

Ukrainian media workers and researchers have also cautioned against assigning combatant roles to the dead without evidence, warning that such narratives echo dehumanization patterns used in Russian information campaigns around Ukrainian civilian casualties during the war.

Journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk said the case reflects the difficulty of distinguishing between intended military targets, intelligence limitations, and unintended civilian harm in long-range operations conducted under restricted visibility.

She noted that as Ukraine expands its ability to strike deeper into occupied territory, the likelihood of civilian exposure to military-targeted operations may increase even when civilian infrastructure is not the intended objective.

For those involved in documenting war crimes, she said, it is evident that Ukraine has a “deliberate state policy of conducting warfare within international humanitarian law.”

Gumenyuk said personnel involved in drone operations are aware of the risks of civilian harm, adding that “no one wants to be responsible for the death of civilians.”

She described the Starobilsk case as a potential moment of operational learning that may influence how targeting is assessed in the future.

She also argued that internal scrutiny and public discussion of such incidents are part of maintaining accountability under international humanitarian law, particularly as operational reach expands.

She suggested that any operational adjustments or intelligence refinements arising from such cases would likely occur internally rather than being publicly disclosed, due to the sensitive military nature of the issue.

Russian narratives aimed at occupied population control

Andrii Dikhtiarenko, editor at Realna Hazeta, said reporting on the case is necessary to counter both Russian propaganda framing and narratives that assign combatant roles to victims in occupied areas without evidence.

He added that the students killed in Starobilsk were “victims of a war Russia started against Ukraine.”

He also argued that Russian authorities benefit from using such incidents to deepen divisions between Ukrainians in government-controlled areas and those living under occupation, noting that Starobilsk had previously seen pro-Ukrainian demonstrations after the 2022 occupation. 

He suggested that Russian information responses to the incident were likely aimed at reinforcing control over public sentiment in the occupied city.

The Starobilsk events have become part of a broader discussion in Ukraine about long-range warfare, information reliability, and how to report civilian harm when independent verification remains restricted and competing narratives cannot be fully resolved with available evidence.

11,000 Russian drone attacks since 2024

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has seen repeated Russian strikes on civilian areas, with Ukrainian prosecutors documenting more than 11,000 drone attacks on civilians since 2024 alone, alongside sustained targeting of residential buildings, schools, hospitals, and emergency services infrastructure. 

In a recent attack on Kyiv, Russian forces launched a large combined missile and drone strike hitting dozens of locations across the capital, including residential areas, schools, cultural facilities, and public buildings, with at least two people killed and widespread damage reported.

Russians are mounting more Pantsir short-range air defenses onto tall buildings in Moscow in preparation for Ukrainian deep strikes on the capital. 

Footage surfaced online showing a helicopter airlifting a Pantsir onto a roof against the backdrop of a cloudy sky, with raindrops visible. The fact that they’re doing this in inclement weather suggests a degree of urgency, likely provoked by recent Ukrainian attacks. 

Unmanned Systems Forces staff recently told Euromaidan Press that Ukrainians have raised their opportunities to strike at a scale and coordination that could slip through the cracks of even the most heavily-defended city in Russia. 

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Contents

• Ukraine’s attack on Moscow: Show of force? Yes. Path of revenge? Not quite.
  1. As UGV adoption soars, Ukraine must write the playbook for saving soldiers’ lives
  2. Newly-announced Litavr interceptor is a model microcosm of Ukraine’s drone innovation programs
  3. Ukraine’s drones got bigger warheads. A Russian corvette in the Baltic just found out.

Ukraine’s attack on Moscow: Show of force? Yes. Path of revenge? Not quite.

The Pantsir in the footage looks like an SMD-E model, which removes the twin 30-mm autocannons and can be equipped with a dozen 57E6 short-range missiles or 48 TKB-1055 mini-missiles, for when the sky is filled with incoming weapons such as drones. The Russian armed forces started receiving this system in September 2025.

This version of the Pantsir has a smaller mass and volume and thus, a better fit for tall buildings, Defense Express wrote. 

Moscow is also ringed with Pantsir systems on dedicated towers, with OSINT analyst Mark Krutov counting more than 100. 

However, every system deployed to defend Moscow is a system that cannot be deployed elsewhere, possibly opening windows of opportunity for Ukraine to strike. 

Tochnyi reported in March that confirmed strikes on S-300 and S-400 batteries, Tor and Pantsir short-range systems, and their attendant radars, have “eroded Russia’s ability to maintain coherent air defence coverage across its southern military districts and the occupied territories.” 

Each degraded node is not just a destroyed platform but “a gap in the sensor-to-shooter chain that Russian doctrine requires.” The cumulative effect is a “progressive hollowing out of Russian anti-access/area denial coverage at a pace that production and repair struggles to offset. 

Meanwhile Ukrainian attacks are growing in volume, range, and sophistication. Ivan Kirichevskyi, a soldier with the 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment, said that as far as the top-used FP-1 and An-196 Lyutiy drones are concerned, Ukraine has reached production volumes "comparable to or perhaps even exceeding the Russian Shaheds."

That doesn't mean that Ukraine's air campaign is going to be easy. Russian air defense is effective enough to shoot down the large majority of Ukrainian weapons. 

It is also evolving. The Russians have recently introduced the ZAK-30 Citadel point defense cannon, which mounts 30-mm autocannons with controllable airburst capabilities. These may pose a very real threat to FP-1 and Lyutiy drones, Defense Express wrote. 

Ukrainian drone-maker Fire Point is arming its FP-1 and FP-2 one-way attack drones with underwing unguided rockets. Co-founder Denis Shtilerman's dream target: a Russian supply train hauling multiple tanker cars full of fuel bound for Russian field armies.

With eight rockets plus its own on-board warhead, an FP-1 or FP-2 could blast the entire train instead of taking out just one car. "That is exactly where it will be effective," Shtilerman told Ukrainian news outlet NV. "When a train with a bunch of tanks is caught, it will justify itself the first time."

The upgrade arrives as Ukraine's counterlogistics campaign accelerates. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian supply lines doubled between February and March, and were on track to double again between March and April, the most recent month for which good statistics are available.

"Strikes against storage facilities, particularly ammunition depots, as well as fuel infrastructure and rail networks, form over a quarter of total activity," Ukrainian analysis group Tochnyi noted. "The intensity of attacks on munitions storage aligns with observed reductions in Russian artillery usage, while fuel-related targeting suggests a parallel effort to constrain mechanized operations by disrupting supply chains behind the front and most importantly politically on the home front."

Fire Point builds thousands of FP-1s and similar FP-2s every year at a cost of around $50,000 per drone. The FP-2s carry bigger warheads—up to 200 kg—but less fuel than the FP-1s. The remote-controlled drones, which connect to their operators via satellite or mesh radio, are the preferred munitions for Ukrainian drone units conducting medium-range strikes on Russian air defenses and hardened targets such as headquarters in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

The FP-1s and FP-2s have been buzzing over occupied Ukraine and adjacent Russian oblasts for more than three years now, but they didn't get their own underwing armament until this spring. The first video of an FP-1/2 firing S-5 rockets appeared online in early May.

A remote operator can trigger the rockets. But there's also a built-in algorithm that allows an FP-1/2 to fire its rockets automatically, Shtilerman revealed.

Clearing paths through air defenses

The rockets' current main purpose is to lob a few of the 5-kg S-5s at Russian air defenses protecting the FP-1/2's primary target, clearing a path for the drone and its own internal shaped-charge warhead, which weighs up to 200 kg depending on the drone model.

"Worms, lube up—now you've got candies in the rear, too," the 414th Separate Unmanned Strike Aviation System Brigade quipped. "Especially MANPADS mobile groups and machine gunners guarding air defense elements." The 414th is one of several units that fly FP-1s and FP-2s. A MANPADS is a "man-portable air defense system"—a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile, the likes of which Russian forces deploy around high-value targets.

But the same S-5 rockets could wreak havoc on train cars full of fuel. The S-5 has armed Russian and Ukrainian warplanes and helicopters for decades. The munition is abundant in Ukraine, especially now that Ukrainian helicopters only rarely operate along the front line owing to the danger from missiles and interceptor drones.

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Ukrainian drones now reach so deep that Russia closed its main highway to Crimea

A video the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces posted on Monday depicts at least two FP-2 strikes on Russian trains in Donetsk Oblast in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. Two tanker cars burned. Now imagine that the FP-2s that blasted those trains could've fired eight rockets before slamming themselves into their targets.

Imagine potentially eight times as much damage per strike.

Ukrainian drone operators claim they’ve set a record by hitting a Russian minibus at 102 kilometers with a quadcopter FPV drone without using a drone carrier. Activist Serhii Sternenko posted the purported exchange with the operators on his Telegram channel.  

The operators wrote that Russian movements ground to a halt. “The killzone for them is fucking insane,” they wrote. 

Euromaidan Press was not able to independently verify the report, however some Ukrainian miltech developers said that this achievement is possible, citing breakthroughs in batteries and communications. 

Misha Rudominski, whose company Himera makes hand-held radios and signal repeaters for Ukrainian troops in the field, said the feat “seems feasible. But needs very specific work on antennas, and last mile autonomy, too.”

Maksym Hnatyk, a representative with drone battery maker Pawell Power, was more sanguine from the power supply point of view.

“There is no doubt it’s possible,” he said. “High-density energy batteries are becoming increasingly popular.”

According to him, batteries with 400-500 watt-hours per kilogram are already available on the market and a light drone with a big battery can make that trip and still blow up a light target. Manufacturers have moved from Lithium-ion batteries towards semi-solid-state, gaining 30% more capacity at the same weight, while being able to handle demanding maneuvers with a high discharge rate.  

“There is a massive boom in research, with scientists constantly developing novel chemical formulas to make batteries both cheaper and higher in capacity. We will see in the near future more and more crazy distance records, he added.

“The kill zone expansion is coming. Soon it will go from 15-30 kilometers to 50-80.” 

Growing the kill zone, expanding mid-range strikes

In many ways, the war between Ukraine and Russia has evolved into a contest of who has the longest stick.

The growing kill zone is a defining factor of Russia's full-scale invasion. Like a reverse tug-of-war, both sides are trying to expand this zone towards their enemy.

Ukraine has been increasing its mid-range strike capabilities. The number of these strikes more than doubled between February and March, hitting air defenses, infrastructure, and Russian trucks, vans and trains within occupied territories.

At those distances, fixed-wing designs that can carry more payload are common. Compared to FPV quadcopters, they are more expensive to develop and scale in production, said Lyuba Shipovich, head of the military support fund Dignitas.

Drone carriers are a widely-fielded solution to expand the range of shorter-range drones like FPVs. These carriers can also carry signal repeaters, improving the reliability of communication with the drone. 

Ukrainian defense firms have been working on making their drones controllable at longer distances, largely through signal repeaters and relays. The company Wild Hornets announced in April that operators were able to control interceptors from 2,000 kilometers away. 

The use of AI to improve individual tasks, including navigating terrain and enhancing last mile guidance has already been in the field for many months, developers previously told Euromaidan Press.

Suppressing the Russians

If the 102-kilometer FPV record Sternenko posted doesn’t end up being a fluke, it can signal two things. 

One: Ukrainian forces may have more flexibility with their attacks beyond the 30-kilometer range with lighter, cheaper drones that can handle lightly-armored targets transporting troops or materiel, without having to always rely on carriers or mid-range fixed-wing UAVs. 

Two: the technology behind this, such as better batteries, stronger mesh networks, and AI autonomy, also applies to bigger, deadlier drones, making them progressively more effective at wearing down the Russians, while cutting corridors to strike their territory directly. 

This can further reduce the capability of Russian troops to maneuver and resupply at longer distances from the zero line, distances that were once considered relatively safe from FPVs.

Still, the Russians are improving their own tech and adapting Ukrainian solutions. It is likely that as the kill zone expands into Russian-held territory, it will likewise expand into the defenders. 

On 22 May, Vladimir Saldo, Russia's installed governor of occupied Kherson Oblast, signed a decree suspending traffic on the section of the M-14 highway running through occupied Kherson to the Dzhankoi checkpoint in northern Crimea — reportedly because Ukrainian drones are hitting Russian supply trucks along the route at a near-daily clip.

It didn't happen overnight. Ukrainian middle-range drone strikes — those traveling as far as 200 km — more than doubled between February and March, according to a recent tally by analysis group Tochnyi. The M-14, Russia's main path from Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia to Russian-occupied Crimea, and the H-20 highway branching off the M-14 in Mariupol and winding north into Donetsk Oblast, are the main focuses of the campaign.

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Contents

• Ukraine wrapped the occupied south in three layers of drones. Russian trucks are burning
  1. 50 blasted trucks
  2. The kill zone, flipped
     • Highway of fire: Russian drones turn Kherson’s lifeline road into a death trap

Ukraine wrapped the occupied south in three layers of drones. Russian trucks are burning

Ukrainian drones are organizing themselves into three concentric zones: FPVs near the gray zone out to around 20 km, AI-assisted Hornets and B-2s pushing over the middle ranges as far as 150 km, and the heavier Fire Point FP-1s and FP-2s reaching as deep as 200 km. The M-14 and H-20 sit squarely inside the middle and outer rings — putting every Russian supply convoy between Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, and the Crimean approaches into sustained reach.

We don't know how many Russian trucks and vans travel the main supply routes in southern Ukraine every day, shuttling supplies and reinforcements between logistical hubs and front-line regiments. But Ukrainian drone pilots are hitting potentially dozens of them. It's unclear just how much strain those losses are placing on Russian regiments, but it's not none. It's telling that Russian forces overall lost ground in Ukraine in March and April, at the same time Russian forces are usually advancing as part of their traditional spring offensive. And it's evident Ukrainian commanders are looking for opportunities to attack.

It's apparent the Russians are preparing to reinforce their air defenses along these roads. Perhaps by deploying more radio jammers, gun teams and missile launchers. Perhaps by installing anti-drone nets over the roads. Perhaps both.

Hornet, B-2 and other AI-assisted drones are now so thick in the sky over the M-14 and H-20 that the drones sometimes glimpse each other in their forward-looking cameras.

"The surest path to achieving this is pushing the 'sanitization zone' for enemy logistics closer to Russia itself and occupied Crimea," the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps stated. The corps' drone pilots are responsible for many of the raids along the H-20.

There are enough drones in the air that they not only hit Russian supply trucks, they have also struck the trucks the Russians send out to fetch damaged and destroyed supply trucks. Ukrainian drones recently observed one of these double-tap strikes somewhere on the road to Crimea.

50 blasted trucks

One observer scrutinized three recent 1st Azov Corps video montages and counted strikes on around 50 Russian trucks. The videos may depict several days of strikes, so it's hard to calculate a daily strike rate. But it's worth noting that the 1st Azov Corps isn't the only Ukrainian formation droning the M-14 and H-20.

The emergence of a Ukrainian middle-range counter-logistics campaign took many observers by surprise. "Mid-range logistics genocide arrived without notice, as the result of long-term systemic work," mapper and analyst Vitaly mused.

As recently as late 2025, some critics accused planners in Kyiv of neglecting middle-range strikes in favor of short-range drone raids targeting Russian infantry in the disputed gray zone.

"The drone war is not about the number of killed today," wrote Ryan O'Leary, an American who once led a volunteer company fighting for Ukraine. "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 drones are still optimized for destroying infantry, not for changing sectors," O'Leary stressed in his now-deleted post on social media. "This creates cool videos, but delivers weak strategic effect."

The middle-range strikes, which ramped up shortly after O'Leary wrote his missive, are delivering strong strategic effect. "In some directions, Ukrainian units are potentially setting the conditions for future tactical offensive operations by disrupting Russian logistics and targeting [drone] crews," wrote Dmytro Putiata, a Ukrainian drone operator and expert who co-founded the Two Marines analysis group. "This could lead to additional offensive operations before the end of the spring."

Indeed, some Ukrainian units are already looking for opportunities to exploit the apparent strain on Russian troops. Ukraine recaptured more ground than Russia took in February for the first time since Ukraine's August 2024 Kursk incursion, and Russia continued losing ground through April. Drones drove some 96 percent of Russia's March casualties.

On 22 May, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps counterattacked north of Lyman, aiming to relieve the pressure on the twin free cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

The kill zone, flipped

The M-14 has been here before. In August 2025, the same highway, on its Ukrainian-controlled stretch between Kherson and Mykolaiv, was a Russian "drone safari" killing ground for civilians. Russian FPV drone operators hunted minivans, ambulances, and lone drivers on the road until Ukrainian authorities briefly restricted civilian traffic on 27 August 2025.

Within days, Ukrainian forces deployed anti-drone nets along the highway. By 3 September, not a single Russian drone had reached the road. The UN later classified Russia's drone campaign on Kherson civilians as a crime against humanity. The Russian-controlled segment of the same M-14, for now, has Saldo's decree.

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On 25 May, Russia threatened systematic strikes on Kyiv "in violation of the spirit of the Victory Day ceasefire, likely to posture strength after the humiliation of the ceasefire itself," the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote. The EU, France, Poland, and Ukraine's Foreign Ministry refused to leave the Ukrainian capital within hours. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio took Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's call but downplayed the message.

ISW: The threat hides a humiliated Kremlin

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned of "systematic" strikes against Ukrainian defense industrial facilities, drone production sites, and decision-making centers in Kyiv. The ministry called on foreign citizens, diplomats, and international organizations to leave the city. It also urged Kyiv residents to stay clear of military and government infrastructure.

"Russia’s warning and continued strikes are an attempt to obfuscate Russia’s weakness," ISW wrote.

Putin is trying to recover from the embarrassment of asking Kyiv to allow his 9 May Victory Day parade. He is also trying to distract from Moscow's failure to shield its capital and deep-rear cities from Ukraine's expanding long-range drone strikes. The think tank added that Putin is struggling to shield Russians from the economic strain of the war, and that Russian forces are failing to make operationally significant advances in the Spring-Summer 2026 offensive.

The Kremlin framed its new threat as retaliation for Ukraine's 21-22 May strikes on a former college in occupied Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast. Ukraine's General Staff reported the site had been turned into a barracks for the elite Russian Rubicon drone unit. 

Lavrov phoned Rubio the same day to relay the message and push the line that Ukraine and its European partners were sabotaging peace efforts, ISW noted.

The framing fails on its own timeline. Russia began intensifying strikes on Kyiv from the night of 12-13 May — over a week before the Starobilsk hit. That combined assault destroyed a section of a Darnytskyi-district apartment block and ultimately killed 24 civilians. The Kremlin also blamed its 23-24 May assault on Kyiv on Starobilsk. 

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Brussels, Warsaw, Paris, and Kyiv refused to leave

EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernová called Moscow's statement "a masterpiece of hypocrisy," ZN reported. 

"A regime that has been bombing residential buildings, museums, maternity hospitals, schools, and power plants for years has suddenly started speaking the language of 'international humanitarian law' and 'the Geneva Conventions,'" she said. "The EU isn't going anywhere. We are staying in Kyiv. We are staying with Ukraine. Kyiv stands. Ukraine stands. And we do too."

The French embassy in Ukraine told Interfax-Ukraine it would continue operating as usual, condemning Moscow's threat as unacceptable and contrary to Russia's international obligations.

Poland went further. Warsaw warned on 25 May that it would treat any attack on Polish diplomatic missions as deliberate, RFE/RL reported.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called the Russian threats "shameless blackmail" in a 25 May statement, thanking diplomats who continue working in the country. The ministry said Moscow is effectively admitting its attacks aim to intimidate the foreign diplomatic corps — admissions it called future evidence in international legal proceedings against the aggressor state. 

Rubio took Lavrov's call—and softened the response

Rubio told reporters Lavrov had passed him a message from Putin intended for Trump, which he relayed, RFE/RL journalist Alex Raufoglu reported. 

Rubio downplayed any suggestion that Russia had specifically pressed the US to withdraw embassy staff from Kyiv. Moscow had broadly warned diplomatic facilities that the Ukrainian capital remained dangerous, he said.

"The danger in all of these wars, as they continue and then they go on, is that they always have the threat of escalation," Rubio said. 

Russian forces in southern Ukraine heavily depend on trucks to bring them reinforcements and supplies. Those trucks, hundreds every day, mostly travel from Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia through occupied Mariupol in occupied southern Ukraine before heading farther west toward occupied Crimea or turning north toward occupied Donetsk.

Both routes—the M-14 highway from Rostov and the H-20 threading north into Donetsk—are under intensive drone attack.

It's working. Strikes on Russian logistics in the occupied south more than doubled between February and March, Ukrainian analysis group Tochnyi found. And the Russians lost ground in March and April. Ukrainian drone units have organized themselves into three concentric zones—short-range FPVs near the gray zone, mid-range AI drones over the highways, long-range Fire Point models reaching 200 km deep.

The aim: bleed Russian supplies. And, in so doing, buy Ukrainian engineers time to prepare better defenses along the 1,200-km front line of Russia's 51-month wider war on Ukraine.

"The Rostov-Crimea and Mariupol-Donetsk roads are the backbone of Russian presence in the south," mapper and analyst Clément Molin explained. And that's why more Ukrainian drone units are launching more drones toward the roads.

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Tochnyi connected the dots. "The intensity of attacks on munitions storage aligns with observed reductions in Russian artillery usage, while fuel-related targeting suggests a parallel effort to constrain mechanized operations by disrupting supply chains behind the front."

Anecdotally, it seems the middle-strike drones are becoming a serious problem for Russian truckers. More and more drivers are recording Ukrainian drones swooping low over the M-14 and H-20 highways. More and more drivers are passing burning trucks and logging their distress on social media.

One startling video that appeared online this week depicts a Ukrainian drone narrowly missing a military cargo truck parked beneath some trees lining the M-14 near Pryazovske in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The drone, apparently a Swift Beat Hornet with AI-assisted targeting, exploded in the trees.

The Ukrainian drone deployment has three distinct zones range-matched to risk, as Molin explained.

The campaign is only possible because Ukrainian industry has massively scaled up drone production over the last four years and now churns out millions of small FPVs and tens of thousands of heavier drones every year.

But there's another key enabler: the communications infrastructure that connects drones to a growing roster of remote operators. "The drone program has intensified, with more pilots available who can fly their drones far behind the front lines thanks to excellent Starlink connectivity," Molin explained.

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The Starlink satellite terminals can be jammed, however, so Ukrainian drone units have backup comms. Mesh radio networks, in which many connected drones send and receive signals to each other, are the main backup. But some drones also have entirely self-contained inertial navigation systems that work when all external comms go down.

To blunt the drone campaign, the Russians must adapt. They could position more air defense teams near the highways and cover the same roads with nets. But even these adaptations would count as a victory for the Ukrainians. "This is the Ukrainian strategy," Molin explained. To "force Russia to change [its] strategy, which will obviously be less efficient."

A better-protected but less efficient Russian logistical system still results in fewer reinforcements and less supplies reaching front-line regiments.

Ukraine's AI drones are ranging as far as 200 km from the disputed gray zone, hunting down Russian supply trucks and wreaking havoc on Russia's front-line logistics as Ukrainian forces fight to delay, or at least deplete, the Russians' large-scale spring offensive.

And soon those high-tech new drones, including the Hornet, B-2 and other models, could range much farther with the help of a very old low technology. Balloons.

That could turn Ukraine's middle-strike drones into deep-strike drones, massively expanding the area in occupied Ukraine and adjacent Russian oblasts where AI drones can pluck at Russian logistics. The deeper the logistical raids, the weaker Russian regiments would be as they launch assaults across the gray zone without all their supplies and reinforcements.

On Wednesday, footage circulated depicting Ukrainian developers testing a balloon-launched Hornet. The helium-filled balloon lofted the 2-m Hornet as high as 8,000 m before releasing it. The drone then glided down toward the ground, waiting to fully engage its electrically powered propeller.

The combination of a balloon assist and a lengthy glide would greatly extend, perhaps even double, a Hornet's 200-km range.

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Balloon-launched drones were probably inevitable as Russia's wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 51st month. Both sides already use balloons — Russia to extend the range of radio networks, Ukraine to sow havoc over Russia with payload drops and to distract Russian air defenses during drone raids. The launch platform was the logical next use.

But balloons give and they take. Yes, a balloon costing just a few thousand dollars is an inexpensive way of carrying a small payload potentially hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. But balloons are at the mercy of the wind, and the wind patterns high over Ukraine don't always point into occupied territories and Russia itself.

Balloon forces can only wait until conditions are favorable. And even when they are favorable, the winds may constrain the attackers, forcing them to attack from certain points toward certain points.

The comms problem

There are other constraints besides the wind. A drone is only as useful as the command and control network that supports it. The most advanced Ukrainian AI drones such as the Hornet have onboard algorithms that can recognize certain targets (military cargo trucks, for instance) and autonomously steer the explosive drones into their targets.

But even these drones have remote human operators who help fly them toward their target zones, and who click buttons approving the drones' targets. Until Ukraine deploys fully autonomous drones, it'll need to extend its communications at the same pace it extends its drone strikes.

That can mean a lot of things. Starlink satellite terminals provide connectivity across occupied Ukraine but don't work in Russia (as a matter of policy by the Elon Musk-controlled company) and are also vulnerable to Russian jamming. Mesh radio networks made up of many connected senders and receivers are harder to jam but require a lot more hardware. Some drones can piggyback on Russia's own 5G cellular networks, but Russian authorities work hard to block unauthorized 5G devices including Ukrainian drones.

A balloon drone can't just range thousands of kilometers into Russia if there isn't a radio network ranging just as far. Yes, Ukraine deploys fully autonomous attack drones that can range deep inside Russia thanks to their self-contained inertial navigation systems, but these large drones don't need help from balloons to travel a thousand kilometers or farther.

No, balloons are clearly optimized for carrying smaller middle-strike AI drones and nudging them closer to Russian oblasts. If Ukrainian developers are working on drone comms as hard as they're working on alternative launch methods, A.I. drones could soon strike twice as far.

The easiest solution to the comms problem might be the most obvious: add radio relays to the balloons themselves.

Russia's air-to-air Shaheds haven't shot down a Ukrainian jet or helicopter yet. As far as we know.

But Russia keeps building them. Three documented cases in five months suggests the experiment isn't ending—which leaves Ukrainian aircrews with a question about which of their aircraft are actually at risk.

Ukraine's fastest drone interceptors probably aren't in much danger. But its slower ones may be vulnerable.

In December, the Russians armed at least one Shahed with an R-60 infrared-guided dogfighting missile. Continuing the experiment in January, they armed another Shahed with the missile from a Verba infrared-guided man-portable air-defense system. A surface-to-air missile adapted for air-to-air use.

Four months later on or just before Tuesday, an interceptor drone operated by the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces spotted another R-60-armed Shahed—and apparently knocked it out of the sky.

There's no evidence either the R-60 Shahed or Verba Shahed has shot at a Ukrainian aircraft—to say nothing of shooting down a Ukrainian aircraft. The missiles probably aren’t the main problem, however. The main problem, most likely, is the command-and-control network that supports the Shahed barrages.

Consider the Verba, a 25-pound, shoulder-fired missile that reaches around 5 km out and 5 km up. It needs to be aimed fairly tightly at its target in order to stand any chance of locking on. The missile’s field of view is just 25 degrees.

Most Shaheds navigate via satellite, but a close inspection of the wreckage from at least one armed model the Ukrainians shot down revealed it had a mesh radio that connected it, via other interconnected radios, to its remote operator hundreds of kilometers away—an operator who saw what the drone saw via the drone’s forward-looking camera.

An operator would have to command a Shahed to unmask its missile’s infrared seeker. After that, the operator would need to aim the drone—and thus its missile, too—at an aerial target. A Ukrainian fighter, helicopter or fixed-wing gunship.

That would be difficult even with a zero-lag radio link for video transmission. When the US Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency armed General Atomics MQ-1 drones with Stinger infrared-guided air-to-air missiles back in 2002, officials assumed the missile wouldn’t actually work—but might “spook” enemy pilots, according to historian Richard Whittle.

The one time an MQ-1 engaged an enemy fighter—an Iraqi air force Mikoyan MiG-25 in 2002—the MQ-1 lost.

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Fatal lag

Lag is the issue. A Lockheed Martin F-16 or Mikoyan MiG-29 cruises twice as fast as a Shahed does, and fires its own AIM-9 or R-73 missiles twice as far as a Shahed can fire its Verba. With real-time comms, a Shahed would still be at a disadvantage while trying to lock onto an F-16 or MiG-29.

But Shaheds are not capable of real-time comms. Ukrainian sources found that Shaheds with direct links to human operators—so far the only Shaheds that can realistically be armed for self-defense—suffer noticeable delay in their video transmission.

With the inevitable seconds-long lag from a Russian mesh radio network, a Verba lock-on isn’t impossible—but it is probably very hard to get, even for a highly skilled operator.

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The lag may protect the Ukrainian air force's fastest drone-hunters—its F-16s, MiG-29s and Dassault Mirage 2000s—from Shaheds armed with R-60s and Verbas. But it may not protect the slowest drone-hunters, including helicopters as well as the Antonov An-28 transport plane gunship that has become an icon of Ukrainian air defense.

The propeller-driven An-28, which is armed with a side-firing minigun and an underwing rack for interceptor drones, has shot down scores of Shaheds. But where an F-16 cruises faster than 900 km/hr, an An-28 cruises slower than 200 km/hr. And the Antonov lacks maneuverability.

Controller lag matters less when the target is slow. There are still air-to-air Shaheds out there among the thousands of one-way attack drones that pummel Ukrainian cities every month. Ukrainian aircrews should watch out.

Especially the ones in slower aircraft.

Evacuating the wounded from the front lines presents a serious and persistent problem when Russian FPV drones are in the sky. Uncrewed Ground Vehicles, conventional vehicles, and basic manpower all have notable drawbacks on modern Ukrainian battlefields.

It’s why Ukrainian forces are testing new approaches, like a multicopter UAV. TSN journalist Yulia Kyriienko posted the video of the test on her Telegram channel. It shows a heavy, six-propeller drone with a stretcher mounted on the stand underneath. It lifts a man playing the role of a wounded soldier into the air, then sets down again.

Kyriienko wrote that the tech is being explored as an alternative when there is a shortage of UGVs available for casualty evacuation (casevac).   

Ukrainian service members who spoke to Euromaidan Press ultimately judged it to be a niche solution: fine to have as an option but unlikely to be a mainstay. A flier of that size would need serious air cover from Russian FPV drones to complete its missions, not unlike the uncrewed ground vehicles it would be replacing. It’d also be vulnerable to enemy and friendly small-arms fire and the weather. 

"Today, the lifespan of the Vampire (Ukraine's premier heavy bomber UAV) is about 10 flights,” said Callsign Electric, a drone expert with the 93rd Brigade. “How long will this thing survive, with a person on board?” 

Andrei Kushniarou, commander of the 108th Battalion DaVinci Wolves said that trying to use UAVs in this role is “quite logical. But it's unlikely to become widespread, given their vulnerability to FPV drones. As an additional option, it's fine. As a serious solution, no.”

The search for a “serious solution” for casevac has dogged Ukrainian forces and defense developers for years, and is especially visible in the attempt to find it in UGVs. 

Trapped and wounded on the front line

It could take days, weeks, and sometimes months to get someone out of a forward position, especially if they cannot move, according to multiple testimonials from service members. Food and water can be delivered by Vampire-class drones, but otherwise, the wounded are left to live or die by the grace of luck and the care of their brothers in arms until a window of opportunity appears.  

"It all depends on the situation, the environment, the location, the evacuation. There are cases where the wounded wait weeks and even months for evacuation," Electric said. "They're there with no end in sight." 

Sometimes they make it. At other times, nothing else works and they’re killed or succumb while trying to escape. 

The drone kill zone often stretches for at least a dozen kilometers away from what Ukrainians call the zero line. The ubiquity of FPVs has gradually whittled away at older methods: military vehicles or civilian vehicles pressed into military service. The enemy will spot them and blow them up with repeated attacks from the air. Dragging people out by hand comes with its own problems, especially if injuries are severe enough.

As a result, Ukrainians have increasingly turned to UGVs, the fastest-growing, soil-hugging swiss army knife of the full-scale invasion. UGVs existed before 2022 but have only started seeing mass adoption in 2026, soldiers told Euromaidan Press. 

Most of them are configurable wheeled or tracked platforms. While modular designs are in vogue and Ukrainian forces are increasingly mounting weapons and UAV launch cradles on their ground robots, the large majority are still being used for logistics: mobile metal boxes that can get in and out of a combat zone without putting a human life in danger. 

The vast majority of UGVs used for casevac are specced for logistics tasks. Logistics UGVs are the primary growth driver of the uncrewed ground market segment, growing by 556% in 2026, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. 

Logistics machines are helpful and have successfully evacuated many wounded people. The one dedicated evacuation ground robot Ukraine uses is the Maul, which has dozens of successful missions under its belt. It has a coffin-shaped armored capsule in which to put the wounded.

However, Kushniarou said they all come with problems, adding that Ukraine still lacks UGVs that could be called casevac systems with an entirely straight face.

No dedicated casevac

“Imagine you are wounded, for example your leg is messed up. And you have to lie in just a metal box. You can't even align (your body) to this metal box in your armor vest,” he said. “You can’t lie in this box without moving your legs when they have to be elevated. Especially if you’re alone, you’re wounded, it could be a problem.”

Most metal boxes come with no protection. Often, they might require for a soldier to lie on their back, which can be a choking hazard if the soldier vomits, Kushniarou said. Also, depending on the size of the person and the UGV, the box can be too small. 

“I have two guys in my unit who just physically don’t fit into the box,” he added. 

Soldiers said that evacuation platforms are usually jury-rigged together onto logistics UGV, with Electric saying that these mods are performed by the units themselves as a general rule. That could include features for additional comfort.

Olexiy Severyn, Commercial Director for Ukrainian Unmanned Technologies, which makes the big, modular Ravlyk UGV, spoke about his company’s own difficulties with trying to design a casevac platform to mount onto their machine. The evacuations the Ravlyk has managed to carry out were done inside the box, or on a towed attachment. 

“We were working on a kind of a capsule where the wounded soldier can be placed,” Severyn said. “If he is unconscious, okay. But this will be another battle for him if he’s claustrophobic or has a psychological problem.” 

While both he and Kushniarou agree that it would help for the soldier to be able to see the sky, any kind of transparent compartment is a hazard in case of a Russian strike. 

Making sure the soldier has enough air and can communicate with friendlies adds new layers of engineering challenges. To minimize jostling, which can aggravate injuries, casevac UGVs should have extra good suspension, which adds yet another. Every desirable feature makes the engineering demands more complex. 

The problem with specialized machines 

That is one of Electric's issues with the notion of dedicated casevac UGVs. The challenges they're meant to solve and the realities of Ukraine's battlefields are largely incompatible, he said. The current solutions are imperfect, but they may be better than the alternative. 

"It's physically impossible to transport a wounded patient according to standard medical evacuation protocols, so that he's secured to these stretchers as required by these standards,” Electric said. 

Indeed, a logistics drone is often much more suitable for evacuation than a specialized model, he continued. "Because a logistics vehicle is a vehicle that operates hundreds of kilometers every day, guaranteed to be operational, and that's the most important thing: it's physically able to get there and leave."

He said it also makes less sense to have a dedicated machine than a modifiable logistics vehicle. While imperfect, it’s adequate in a pinch, with sufficient alterations.  

Moreover, a modular system makes more sense from a procurement, logistics and operational standpoint. It's more logical to have one multipurpose machine that could carry supplies to the front, then ferry the wounded to the rear. 

“In the current conditions, a specialized evacuation system can't even be developed yet,” Electric said. “There isn't one that's suitable for today's conditions.”

As such, there may be no flawless solutions to the problem of saving wounded warriors right now. But Ukrainians haven’t given up on trying to find one. The hexcopter revealed by Kyriienko is one such attempt. 

While some are very skeptical of this machine—one Azov Corps specialist called it “delusional” —it is a stitch in the tapestry of experimentation that has allowed Ukrainians to hold off the Russian military for over four years running.

Every day, day after day, Russian warplanes pummel Ukrainian positions with as many as a hundred KAB glide bombs. The 40-km-range, satellite-guided bombs, some as heavy as three tons, are among the most devastating weapons in Russia's 51-month wider war on Ukraine—and a crucial factor in Russia's plans for a renewed push in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Russia rains thousands of glide bombs on Ukrainian troops every month. Ukraine's pilots get a few dozen American- and French-made ones. A homemade bomb is Ukraine's only realistic way to start closing that gap.

Now Ukraine is preparing to bomb back with its own homemade glide bombs. On Monday, Brave1—the Ukrainian government's defense tech arm—released new footage of an all-Ukrainian glide bomb in testing. In the footage, a Ukrainian air force Sukhoi Su-24 drops one of the winged bombs.

After 17 months of development, the 250-kg-warhead bomb "is ready for combat deployment," Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced. "Pilots are currently rehearsing combat scenarios and adapting the new weapon system for use in real wartime conditions. Soon, Ukrainian glide bombs will be striking enemy targets."

The Ukrainian glide bomb can't reach air force fighter and bomber brigades fast enough.

Yes, Ukrainian forces have significantly escalated their drone strikes on Russian forces in the critical middle zone stretching around 200 km from the disputed gray zone. It's in this zone that the Russians concentrate their front-line logistics. Striking the supply convoys as they're winding their way toward the combat regiments weakens the regiments before they can even launch an assault.

Heavier strikes

But a middle-range strike drone with a 50-kg warhead lacks the explosive firepower of a glide bomb with a 250-kg warhead.

The Ukrainians don't have much choice but to lean on drones for middle-range strikes, however. Ukrainian air force brigades rely on paltry supplies of just a few dozen American- and French-made glide bombs a month; they can't match the Russian air force's own regiments as the Russians fling thousands of glide bombs every month.

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. There's a destructive disparity as Ukrainian drones lightly tap Russian supply lines while Russian glide bombs heavily smash Ukrainian supply lines.

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A steady supply of Ukrainian-made glide bombs could help close the middle-strike gap. As a bonus, the Ukrainian glide bomb appears to have at least one advantage over its American and French equivalents. A large radome at the back of the bomb may house an array of jam-resistant Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas, which many Western glide munitions lack.

To strike accurately, glide bombs need a steady connection to navigation satellites. Ground-based radio jamming can block that connection. A CRPA array can find the navigation signal through the jamming noise. When Fedorov claimed the Ukrainian glide bomb "features a unique design created specifically for the realities of modern warfare," he was probably referring to the CRPA array.

Practically all of Ukraine's warplanes are compatible with at least one type of gliding munition, but the new Ukrainian glide bomb could be especially useful to the Ukrainian air force's small fleet of Sukhoi Su-24 bombers. Su-24s appear to be the main platform for testing of the new glide bomb—and could be the main platforms for deploying the bomb in combat, too.

Most Western readers know Crimea as the place Russia took in 2014, with little green men and a referendum almost nobody outside Moscow recognized. Fewer people know who lived there first. This is their story, and it did not end in 1944.

Eighty-two years ago this week, the Soviet state deported an entire people from their homeland in the space of three days — one of the fastest mass deportations ever carried out. Ukraine marks 18 May as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People. The reason it still matters in 2026, and not only as a date on a calendar, is that the people in these stories, or their children, are being uprooted and jailed again right now.

Osman Kadyraliyev

The soldiers told Osman Kadyraliyev's family to bring food for three days. "Then you'll come back," they said. It was four in the morning on 18 May 1944, in a mountain village above Alushta, in Crimea. The family had time to get dressed and grab a little of whatever food a just-liberated village still had, which was almost none. They were marched to the square, held there all day, loaded standing into trucks, then packed into a freight car. Osman's mother had hit her head badly during the journey. She died a week after they arrived in Uzbekistan. She was 35. His father gave his share of food to the children and died of starvation half a year later.

They did not come back. Not in three days, not in three years. Most who survived would not see Crimea again for half a century, and a great many never saw it again at all.

The people who were there first

The Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of the Crimean peninsula, where they have lived for over a thousand years. They had their own state, the Crimean Khanate, centered on Bakhchysarai, with its own court, language, and architecture. On the eve of Russia's 2014 occupation they numbered roughly 300,000 — about a tenth of Crimea's population.

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Russia's interest in the peninsula is not new. Catherine II's generals finally took Crimea in 1771 not by burning it — earlier scorched-earth campaigns had failed for lack of anyone left to feed the army — but by buying off factions inside the Khanate and dividing it from within. Formal annexation by the Russian Empire followed in 1783. Within a few years a third of the Crimean Tatar population had fled across the Black Sea. That is the first of what Crimean Tatars count as their three black dates: 1783, 1944, 2014.

Sürgünlik — the exile

The Crimean Tatars have a word for what happened in 1944: Sürgünlik — the exile. Crimea was retaken from the Germans in mid-May 1944. Within days, the NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria recommended to Stalin that the whole nation be removed for "treason," and Stalin signed GKO Order No. 5859ss, banishing the Crimean Tatars from their homeland "permanently as special settlers." The charge of mass collaboration was a pretext: Crimean Tatar men were at that moment fighting in the Red Army, and when the war ended they were demobilized straight from the front into exile alongside their families.

Some 32,000 NKVD personnel ran the operation. Families were given between 15 and 30 minutes, woken at gunpoint, marched to collection points, then loaded onto cattle trains at the stations of Bakhchysarai, Dzhankoi, and Simferopol and sent some 4,000 kilometers east, to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Siberia. Soviet figures put the number deported at over 190,000; other estimates run to 200,000 and beyond. Surveys later conducted by Crimean Tatar activists found that 109,956 of 238,500 deportees — 46.2 percent — died of starvation and disease within the first two and a half years. In one episode on the Arabat Spit, the inhabitants of remote fishing villages were herded onto a barge, towed into the Sea of Azov, and scuttled, with a machine-gun boat standing by to make sure no one swam.

The survivors describe the journey in the same flat detail, as if the horror had worn the adjectives off. No water. No toilet. No medical help. The dead left on the railway sleepers under a rag. Seitmemet Ibragimov, eleven years old, in a car of 41 people, found a stub of candle in his pocket and lit it so the families could find each other in the dark. He worked nineteen-hour days for nine years on a collective farm in Uzbekistan.

"We worked like slaves," he said. "And we were slaves, on someone else's land."

Ediye

Ediye Karaieva was two years old, still in a cradle, when Soviet soldiers came to her family's house in the Bakhchysarai hills and asked her father for vodka. There was none in the house. He brought them apples instead. Angry that he had not produced vodka, the soldiers shot him on the doorstep and walked away. A neighbor's boy saw it and told the family what had happened. When her mother came back from the trenches with the other children, the father was lying dead across the threshold.

The night before the deportation — 17 May — her eight-year-old brother Yakub had been too tired to walk the six kilometers home from the fields, so their mother had left him to sleep at his aunt's. At dawn the soldiers gave the family 15 minutes. The mother gathered five daughters and ran. Yakub was not there.

At the station the boy went from freight car to freight car looking for his family and could not find them. The aunt, on a different train, took him; she said everyone was being taken to the same place anyway. The trains went in different directions. The aunt ended up in Kostroma Oblast in Russia. The family ended up in the Mari ASSR, deep in the forest, where the locals had been told that one-eyed savages who had sold their homeland were coming, and where the first word the children heard from a neighbor's boy was "traitors." They did not understand it. They did not speak Russian.

They did not see Yakub for ten years.

In 1954, after Stalin's death, the mother and the eldest daughter were allowed to travel to Kostroma. The boy was eighteen now. They met on a riverbank. The mother recognized her son, standing there, crying. Those were the first tears of joy since the deportation.

The signature

Exile was not a single act but a regime. Every month, the deportees had to report to a Soviet commandant's office and sign that they had not left their assigned settlement. Children signed too, once they turned sixteen. Stepping outside the zone could mean twenty years. This is the part the anniversaries tend to compress — that the erasure had a paperwork rhythm, a monthly signature, kept up for more than a decade. It was not until the late 1980s, under Gorbachev, that surviving families could begin returning to Crimea in real numbers. They came back to find their houses occupied and their villages renamed.

For about two decades, they lived at home. In 2013, the year before the second uprooting, more than 40,000 people gathered in central Simferopol to mark the anniversary of the deportation. It was the last time they could do so freely.

The third date

Then 2014. Russia occupied Crimea, and the people who had spent fifty years getting home began, again, to be pushed out of it. The occupation authorities banned the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars' elected self-governing body, branding it extremist; shut the Crimean Tatar television channel ATR; and barred Crimean Tatar leaders from returning to the peninsula. Tens of thousands left. Crimean Tatars themselves call it a "hybrid deportation" — the same outcome as 1944, achieved with courts and entry bans instead of cattle trains.

The courts are the engine now. Russia outlawed the Islamic movement Hizb ut-Tahrir as terrorist in 2003 — it is legal in Ukraine and most countries, and not one of its members has ever been convicted of a terrorist act — and uses membership accusations as a template for mass prosecutions. By August 2025, the Crimean Tatar Resource Center counted 122 people prosecuted in these cases, 119 of them Crimean Tatars; 83 were serving sentences in Russian prisons. Those cases have left 252 children without fathers. By December 2025, across all categories of political prosecution, the Crimean Resource Center recorded 486 political prisoners over the occupation, 272 of them Crimean Tatars — roughly two-thirds of the human-rights violations it documented fell on this one people.

Some of the prisoners are sick enough that Russian courts have ordered them released, and then re-arrested them. Oleksandr Sizikov, a blind activist from Bakhchysarai serving 17 years on a Hizb ut-Tahrir charge, was freed on health grounds in May 2025 and seized again in October. His mother had described how she guided her blind son around the house by touch and sound. Lenur Khalilov, who has cancer, was let out in August and sent back to prison within months.

Server Mustafayev, who co-founded the grassroots Crimean Solidarity network to support persecuted families and is now serving fourteen years himself, wrote from prison that Russia had destroyed all dissent, journalism, and justice in Crimea, and that thousands had been forced out of "homes they returned to after the genocide and deportation of 1944."

That sentence is the whole story, said by someone living inside it.

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Russia keeps arresting Crimeans. The count just hit 520

What the world is doing about it

Ukraine's parliament recognized the 1944 deportation as genocide on 12 November 2015. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has called on others to do the same. By mid-2025, the Netherlands had become the seventh state to formally recognize it as genocide, after Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and others including Poland. Historians describe a deliberate attempt to make the people disappear from the record — even, for years, to strike the words "Crimean Tatar" from official documents.

At the same time, a US-backed peace proposal — reported to have been shaped with Russian input — would have Crimea recognized as Russian. The Crimean Resource Center warned that such a settlement would legitimize the occupation and the prosecutions running under it. So the position, stated plainly, is this: seven parliaments have now named what was done to the Crimean Tatars in 1944, while a deal is being negotiated that would formally place the survivors' grandchildren, and the men in those prison cells, back under the state that put them there.

The activist Luftiye Zudiyeva, who coordinates Crimean Solidarity, has made the point that the people who actually remember 1944 are dying, and that there are fewer of them every year. The accounts in this piece were given by people who were children in 1944 — eleven, eight, two years old. They are among the last who can say what the knock on the door sounded like.

Ediye Karaieva's mother stood on that riverbank in 1954 and recognized the boy she had not seen in ten years. He was crying. It was the first good thing that had happened to the family since the soldiers came. The grandchildren of that family are now Crimean Tatars again under Russian rule, signing their names not at a commandant's window but in the cages of military courtrooms in Rostov-on-Don, while governments far away decide what Crimea is called.

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) have begun firing unguided aviation rockets from long-range drones deep inside Russian-held territory, the force's commander Robert Brovdi, call sign Madyar, announced on 17 May 2026. The drones now add a stand-off rocket strike to their kamikaze role, a profile built to destroy the mobile teams that shield Russia's air defenses. The first confirmed strike hit a Black Sea Fleet site in occupied Crimea.

What Ukraine added to the drones

Brovdi said operators paired a 60-kilogram strike warhead with eight unguided rockets carried on the drone, used at depths of up to 500 kilometers. The NURS unguided aviation rockets, the Soviet-era S-5 and S-8 family, are normally fired by ground-attack jets like the Su-25 and helicopters such as the Mi-24 against targets on the ground.

No crewed aircraft can survive reaching the depths where these drones operate, which is why the combined kamikaze-plus-rockets method opens new options. Brovdi framed the program as a hunt for the gunners and shoulder-fired missile teams that guard Russian surface-to-air batteries, and taunted those crews directly. He said Russian air-defense work was being dismantled steadily, with "more and more systems already afraid to switch on" for fear of the drones above them.

The strike on occupied Crimea

Militarnyi noted that the Unmanned Systems Forces struck a strategic protected-communications node of Russia's Black Sea Fleet near the settlement of Myrnyi in occupied Crimea. The 1st Separate Center of Unmanned Systems released thermal video and said every strategic enemy site would be destroyed, with nowhere left to hide on land, at sea, or in the air.

The rocket fit on these drones first became known in mid-May 2026 through Russian Telegram channels. Russian military accounts claimed the drones hit mobile air-defense groups using two launchers of four rockets each. The same logic has driven Ukraine's wider effort to hunt the air-defense systems screening Russian forces in the occupied south.

A command post on the Arabat Spit

The Defense Forces also struck a Russian command post on the Arabat Spit in Kherson Oblast, Militarnyi reported. NASA's FIRMS satellite monitoring recorded a strong thermal signature at 02:58, and local residents reported an attack by six strike drones that set off a large fire.

Russia has built a major base on the spit, including the headquarters of its Dnepr group of forces and training grounds. The main occupier headquarters is in the village of Shchaslyvtseve, at the seized Bryhantyna resort base, and Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly visited that site in 2023.