War of Drones: Russia and Crimea Have Been Attacked More Than 190 Times This Year

In 2023, drone attacks were concentrated in the Bryansk, Belgorod, and Kursk regions, as well as in the annexed Crimea. The targets for the attacks were the oil facilities, airfields, and energy infrastructure of the occupiers.

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for them, although Zelensky previously stated that attacks on Russian territory were an “inevitable, natural, and absolutely fair process.”

In turn, the Russian Federation continues attacking Ukrainian cities with drones. According to the General Staff data, yesterday, it carried out another air and missile attack on the territory of Ukraine, using air-launched missiles and Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 combat drones. As a result of successful combat operations by the forces and means of air defence of the Air Force in cooperation with the air defence units of the Defence Forces of Ukraine, 28 cruise missiles and 15 Shahed-136/131 combat UAVs were destroyed.

Combat drones play an important role in the new shelling tactics of the Russians: they combine the use of UAVs and missile weapons. This is one of the options that the enemy can use in the autumn-winter period to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

At the same time, Russia stated that in the second half of this year, there were plans to produce 1,300 units of the so-called “Geran-2,” i.e. Shahed drones: Russians can use components of both foreign and domestic production. However, according to the Main Directorate of Intelligence, they actually are not capable of producing such a number of UAVs today.

At the same time, Ukraine is now actively looking for locations where the Russian Federation manufactures Shahed drones. In the recently downed Shahed drones, the fact of the increase in Russian details was discovered. This is one element of the evidence that the final stage of assembly of these UAVs takes place in the territory of the Russian Federation. Vadym Skibitskyi, a representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, reported this.

Natalia Tolub