Ukraine Is Beating Russia in the Drone War

Ukraine is tipping the balance in its favor in the war of drones, as Kyiv warns Moscow there are more attacks to come after a run of high-profile attacks in recent weeks.

"I don't think that there is any doubt that Ukraine is winning the drone conflict," U.K.-based drone expert, Steve Wright, told Newsweek.

The Ukraine war has seen an acceleration of drone technology development. Both Kyiv and Moscow have scrambled to beef up their forces with unmanned vehicles, and the battle has been "very much escalating," according to Wright.

The technology, and both sides' ability to get hold of and use it, is progressing at "lightning pace," Wright added.

"Russia has been somewhat behind in drones, but it is slowly catching up," said Marina Miron, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of War Studies at King's College London, U.K.

When asked which side was coming out ahead in the race to develop more effective drones, weapons and technology expert David Hambling told Newsweek: "Arguably, the drones are."

Drones "are the super weapon here," Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, told Newsweek in February. Ukraine has put in time and money into curating its "drone army," but Russia has also looked to unmanned technology to supplement its armed forces.

The best known of Russia's drones are the Iranian-made Shahed drones, with Ukraine reporting fresh waves of the "kamikaze" drone strikes on cities and infrastructure almost daily.

Moscow Hit Twice in Three Days

Russia launched a barrage of Iranian-made Shahed drones at Ukraine in a renewed overnight barrage, Ukraine's military said on Wednesday. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 23 Shaheds over the southern Odesa region and around the capital, Kyiv, the air force added.

"Unfortunately, part of the drones launched by the enemy hit the port infrastructure in Odesa region," the air force continued in a statement.

Strikes will typically come from sites in occupied Crimea, the western Russian city of Kursk, and the Primorsko-Akhtarsk air base in Russia's Krasnodar region, according to Kyiv.

But experts say these Shahed drones, a cheap way for Russia to strike Ukraine, are relatively similar to the new unmanned aerial vehicle spotted in footage recorded of drone strikes in Moscow.

A new drone, the "Beaver," has appeared in several clips of drone attacks in the Russian capital. The drone has not been spotted elsewhere in the conflict, and is likely a new combination of pre-existing parts and designs, analysts say.

And these strikes have increased in intensity. Few and far between in May, Russia reported two strikes in three days last week.

On Tuesday, Russian officials said a drone had hit a high-rise tower in Moscow's financial district that houses multiple government departments. The tower was also struck in a drone attack on Sunday.

But Kyiv does not typically claim responsibility for strikes on Russian territory, which can be a tricky topic for Ukraine's Western backers.

In an address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not explicitly acknowledge the drone strikes on Moscow, but did say that "gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia."

"This is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process," he said.

Success in Striking 'Deep Into Russia's Heartland'

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Zelensky's office, said on Tuesday that Russia was "rapidly getting used to a full-fledged war."

"More unidentified drones, more collapse, more civil conflicts," he wrote in a post to X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter.

In remarks reported by Ukrainian media on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Kyiv's defense intelligence agency suggested the drone strikes would continue until Ukraine regains control of the territory it had in 1991, before Russia annexed Crimea and several regions of eastern and southern Ukraine, a process that began in 2014.

"The residents of Moscow should understand the main reason: this issue and the things that will fly into this country's territory are a direct consequence of the terrible bloody criminal war their government has unleashed," Andriy Yusov said, according to Ukrainian outlet Ukrinform.

Analysts agree there is a definite psychological aspect to the strikes, to the drones still inflicting damage despite extensive air defenses and electronic warfare systems in place around Russia's capital.

However, this is not the whole picture. Edging ahead with drone warfare "is still only a small part of the whole war, " Wright said, adding it "is not going to change its course significantly."

Drones are a key part of overall operations, Miron told Newsweek, and should be seen as such, rather than "singled out."

It is difficult to define "winning" despite Ukraine's apparent success in striking "deep into Russia's heartland," Samuel Bendett, of the U.S. think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses, told Newsweek.

"Russia continues to attack Ukraine with Shahed drones, and such attacks grow in intensity each time Ukraine strikes Moscow," he said. "So Ukraine shows Russia that it's capable of striking the country, but that has not deterred Russia from continuing to attack Ukraine."

But Ukraine does appear to be intercepting many Russian-launched drones, despite "significant damage," Hambling said.

Ukraine is approaching the two-month mark of its summer counteroffensive, and although Kyiv's fighters have claimed some gains along the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine, the pace of the push has garnered some criticism.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has hit back at these judgments, telling the BBC in mid-June that although the speed was "slower than desired," it was people's lives "at stake."

In comments to CNN just days before the start of the counteroffensive, Zelensky said Western weapons arriving sooner would have allowed a quicker start to the operations, adding Russia had had time to prepare its defenses.

Weapon deliveries from Western allies were touted as crucial to Ukraine's success and included military aid such as main battle tanks, artillery systems and air defenses.

"The weapons introduced by NATO are still the big deciding factor," Wright said. But the rapidly changing drone race will come to define conflict throughout the century, he said.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Update 08/03/23, 10:15 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from researcher Marina Miron.