Escalating Drone Warfare: The Growing Tactical Shift in Russia-Ukraine Conflict

On Monday, Russia executed its largest drone assault on Ukraine to date, according to Kyiv, intensifying a lethal aerial campaign that analysts believe lacks significant military advantage and seems aimed at undermining civilian morale.

While extensive drone assaults have struck Ukrainian cities for three consecutive nights, Ukraine has retaliated by deploying drones against infrastructure and military locations within Russian borders.

From Sunday night to early Monday morning, Russia launched “355 Shahed-type drones” along with nine cruise missiles—the biggest drone offensive since the start of the invasion, reported Ukraine’s Air Force.

A Sunday strike resulted in the deaths of 13 civilians, including three children from one family, in the central Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr.

In the aftermath of the bombings, President Volodymyr Zelensky urged for increased pressure on Moscow.

«Russian attacks are becoming bolder and larger every night,» Zelensky remarked in his daily update, noting that approximately 900 drones and missiles had been fired at Ukraine over the previous three days.

Military expert Alexei Alshansky asserted that while the scale and frequency of Russia’s drone strikes have risen recently, their strategic relevance remains dubious.

«There is no military purpose behind escalating drone attacks on Ukrainian cities—these actions provide no tactical advantage to the Russian military,» Alshansky told The Moscow Times. “These drones are not hitting military targets; their strikes are entirely random.”

“This is aimed at instilling fear and exerting psychological pressure on civilians—pressuring the Ukrainian side to make concessions in a sham peace negotiation process,” he added, noting that the recent assaults did not seem coordinated with any precision missile attacks, indicating no tactical benefit was achieved.

Similarly, military analyst Yury Fedorov expressed a related perspective.

“It consistently reflects Russia’s strategy to shape public perception—not to strike military or economic infrastructures, but to influence public sentiment in Ukraine,” Fedorov explained to The Moscow Times.

“Conversely, Ukrainian strikes are primarily directed at military and defense industry objectives, which is completely rational. There’s no policy of proportional retaliation,” Fedorov pointed out.

Growing concern within Russia regarding its susceptibility to drone warfare appears evident.

On Tuesday, Moscow accused Kyiv of escalating air assaults to disrupt peace negotiations and stated that its significant offensives against Ukraine were a «response» to Kyiv’s drone activities targeting Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday that it intercepted 99 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 56 drones downed over the Belgorod border area.

According to Russian Telegram channels, the republic of Tatarstan also experienced a drone attack on Monday. Air defense units were active in Yelabuga, where Russia manufactures combat drones utilized in its conflict with Ukraine.

On the same day, regional authorities in Ivanovo reported that four drones had been neutralized in the area, as Telegram channels Mash and Astra noted that the drones were aimed at the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant in the Kineshma industrial zone, which allegedly produces components for Russian military equipment.

Multiple Russian regions, including Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Oryol, Lipetsk, Tula, and Voronezh, also reported brief mobile internet outages following this month’s drone assaults.

Moscow experienced mobile internet disruptions during the May 9 Victory Day festivities, and flight cancellations at airports due to drone strikes have become a frequent nuisance throughout the nation.

As the attacks intensify, Ukraine has cautioned that countering the volume of drones being launched by Moscow is becoming increasingly challenging for its air defense systems.

«We need more efficient and economical means to shoot them down,» stated Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force.

A military source in Ukraine informed AFP that Kyiv is managing to cope with its current air defense capabilities and emphasized there’s «no need to panic,» but indicated that Kyiv “requires Western weaponry deliveries” to continue resisting the bombardments.

Beyond merely attempting to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses with vast numbers of drones, Russia’s tactics regarding drones also seem to be advancing, according to Ivan Stupak, a military expert and former officer of Ukraine’s security services.

“Drones are evolving into more sophisticated tools for both eliminating targets and exhausting air defense systems,” he remarked.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Ignat noted that Moscow has been consistently altering drone flight paths and launching them at higher altitudes, making interception more difficult.

Another noted strategy involves launching multiple drones at a single target, like a town or facility, or using unarmed drones to confuse and distract air defense systems.

A Sunday article in The Economist claimed, citing a group of Ukrainian engineers, that Russia’s latest drone models were “unhindered” by Ukraine’s electronic warfare efforts, as they no longer depended on jammable GPS and were utilizing artificial intelligence. The piece mentioned that drones are being operated via Telegram bots that relay flight data and video feeds in real time.

However, military experts have questioned these assertions.

Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhii Beskrestnov, known by the alias Serhii Flash, dismissed the article as misleading.

“Russian Shaheds are not controlled during flight through Telegram and do not transmit video feeds via Ukrainian mobile networks,” he clarified, adding that “Shaheds lack internal AI” and “still navigate based on satellite signals, which can be jammed.”

Military analyst Alshansky also commented that “incorporating AI into drones would be costly, and if such systems were in use, we would likely find tangible evidence in the debris—like advanced onboard components, for example.”

Nonetheless, some basic automation may be feasible, he explained, noting that the diminished effectiveness of Ukrainian electronic warfare measures against certain drones might indicate the adoption of more advanced defensive technologies that enhance resistance to jamming.

“Rather than simply flying to GPS coordinates, a drone could theoretically compare its observations with satellite imagery of its intended target. This would represent a form of automated navigation—a prototype of AI, one could say,” Alshansky characterized.

Contributions to the reporting were made by AFP.