The increasing war on the drone of Russia spreads fear and eroded Ukrainian morality

Everyone agrees: it gets worse.

People from Kyiv, like the citizens of other Ukrainian cities, have passed a lot.

After three and a half years of fluctuating wealth, they are difficult and extremely durable.

But in recent months, they have been experiencing something new: huge, coordinated waves of air attacks, including hundreds of drones and rockets, often concentrated on one city.

It was Kyiv last night. And the week before. Between them was Lutsk in the far west.

Three years ago, Iranianly delivered Shahed drones were a relative novelty. I remember hearing my first, buzzing a lazy rainbow through the night sky over the southern town of Pershuzhi in October 2022.

But now everyone is familiar with the sound and his most awesome recent iteration: a dive bombing, which some of them have compared to the German plane of World War II Stuka.

The sound of swarms of approaching drones sent hardened civilians back to bomb shelters, subway and underground parking for the first time in the first days of the war.

“The house was shaken as if it were made of paper,” Katya, a resident of Kiev, told me after a bombing last night.

“We spent all night sitting in the bathroom.”

“I went to the parking lot for the first time,” another resident told me.

“The building shook and I saw fires across the river.”

Attacks do not always claim life, but they spread fear and erode morals.

Following an attack on an apartment block in Kiev last week, shocked grandmother Maria told me that her 11-year-old grandson had turned to her in the shelter and said she understood the importance of death for the first time.

He has every reason to fear. The UN Ukraine Human Monitoring Mission (HRMMU) says June has seen the highest civilian civilian casualties in three years, with 232 killed and over 1,300 injured.

Many will be killed or injured in communities close to the front lines, but others are killed in cities away from fighting.

“The tide of a rocket and long -distance drones throughout the country brought even more death and the destruction of civilians, away from the front line,” says Daniel Bell, head of HRMMU.

Modifications in Shahed’s design have allowed him to fly much higher than before and descend on his target from greater altitude.

Its range has also increased to about 2500 km and is able to carry a more deadly payload (over 50 kg of explosive up to 90 kg).

The tracking cards made by local experts shows rotating Shahid drones, sometimes taking chain routes through Ukraine before entering their goals.

Many – often half – are lures designed to confuse and overcome the air protection of Ukraine.

Others, straight lines show the paths of ballistic or cruise missiles: much less in number, but Russia’s weapons counts on the most damage.

The analysis of the Washington Basic Institute for War Study shows an increase in Russia’s drone and rocket strikes during the two months after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

March saw a slight decline, with random spikes, until May, when the numbers suddenly rose dramatically.

New entries with alarming regularity have been set.

June saw a new monthly peak of 5 429 drones, July saw over 2000 in the first nine days alone.

With production in Russia, some reports suggest that Moscow may soon be able to shoot over 1,000 rockets and drones overnight.

Experts in Kyiv warn that the country is in danger of being overwhelmed.

“If Ukraine does not find a solution on how to deal with these drones, we will face major problems in 2025,” says the former intelligence officer Ivan Supak.

“Some of these drones try to reach military objects – we need to understand it – but the rest, they destroy apartments, fall into office buildings and cause many damage to citizens.”

For all their growing capabilities, drones are not a particularly sophisticated weapon. But they are another example of the huge bay in resources between Russia and Ukraine.

He also illustrates the maximum attributed to the leader of the Second World War of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin that “the quantity has its own quality.”

“This is a war of resources,” says Sergius Kuzan of the Kiev -based Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center.

“When the production of specific rockets became too complicated – too expensive, too many components, too many sophisticated delivery routes – they focused on this particular drone type and developed various modifications and improvements.”

The more drones in an attack, says Kuzan, the more clever he struggles with Ukraine, who struggles to take them down. This forces Kiev to fall again on its valuable supply of jets and air-to-air rockets to download them.

“So, if drones walk like a swarm, they destroy all air defense missiles,” he says.

Therefore the one of President Zelenski permanent appeals To the allies of Ukraine to do more to protect his sky. Not only with Patriot missiles – vital to counteract the most dangerous Russian ballistic threat – but also with a wide range of other systems.

On Thursday, the British government said it would sign a defense agreement with Ukraine to provide over 5,000 air defense missiles.

Kyiv will look for many more such deals in the coming months.