Diplomatic correspondent, Kiev
Everyone agrees: get worse.
The people of Kiev have, as well as citizens of other Ukrainian cities, they passed a lot.
After three and a half years of fluctuating wealth, they are solid and extremely resistant.
But in recent months they experience something new: huge, coordinated waves of air attacks, including hundreds of drone and rockets, often concentrated on one city.
It was Kiev last night. And before and week before. Between, there was Lutsk in the far west.
Three years ago, Shahed Drones delivered Iranian was a relative novelty. I remember that I heard my first, buzzing lazy port over the night sky above the south town of Zaporizhzhia in October 2022. Years.
But now everyone is familiar with the sound and its most difficult recent iteration: dive teasing dive is that some are compared to the German war at the steel spacecraft.
The sound of swarms approach drons sent hardened civilians back into bomb shelters, metro and subway parking for the first time since the early days of the war.
“The house was shaking like it was made of paper,” Katia told me, Kiev resident, he told me after last night’s tough bombing.
“We spent the whole night sitting in the bathroom.”
“For the first time, I went to the parking lot,” another resident told me, Svitlan, he told me.
“The building shook and I could see fires across the river.”
Attacks do not always require lives, but they spread fear and eroding morals.
After attacking the housing block in Kiev last week, a shocked grandmother, told me that her 11-year-old grandson turned to her, in a shelter and realized the meaning of death for the first time.
There is every reason to be afraid. The Mission of the UN Human Rights in Ukraine (HRMMU) says that in three years he saw the most monthly civilian victims, and 232 were killed over 1,300 injured.
Many will be killed or wounded in communities near the front, but others were killed in cities away from the fight.
“Attack in long-lasting rockets and homes on the chandeland by countries brought even more deaths and destruction of civilians away from Front,” says Danielle Bell, head of HRMMU.
ReutersModifications in Shahed’s design They allowed him to fly much more than before and descends to his target with a greater altitude.
The range also increased, at about 2,500 KM, and can carry a more deadly useful load (worse of about 50 kg of explosive at 90kg).
The hats that accompany local experts show the streaming masses of Shahed Drones, sometimes take circular routes across Ukraine before they are in their goals.
Many – often even half – are decisions, designed to confuse and overwhelm defenses in Ukraine.
Other, straight lines show ballistic or projectile cruising trails: much less than the number, but the weapons of Russia rely on the most harm.
The analysis of the Institute for Studying War in Washington shows the rise of the drone of Russian and rockets in two months after the inauguration of Donald Trump in January.
March saw a slight decline, with occasional spikes, while the numbers suddenly rise.
New records are set with alarming regularities.
June has seen a new monthly high than 5,429 drone, July saw more than 2,000 in just the first nine days.
With production in Russia, some reports suggest that Moscow will soon be able to shoot over 1,000 missiles and drones in one night.
Experts in Kiev warn that the country is in danger of being overwhelmed.
“If Ukraine does not find a solution to deal with these drons, we will face major problems during 2025. years,” said former intelligence officer Ivan column.
“Some of these drones are trying to reach military facilities – we must understand that – but the rest, they destroy apartments, falling business buildings and cause a lot of damage to citizens.”
For all their increasing abilities, the drones are not particularly sophisticated weapons. But they represent another example of a huge bay in resources between Russia and Ukraine.
He also illustrates the Maxim neatly, is attributed to the Second World War of the Soviet Union of Two Joseph Stalin, that “the quantity has its own quality.”
“This is a resource war,” says Serhii kuzan, in Ukrainian central and cooperation in Ukrainian security and cooperation.
“When making certain rockets has become too complicated – too expensive, too much components, too complicated supply routes – concentrated on the drone type and developed various modifications and improvements.”
The more drones in one attack says, Kazan says, more Ukraine’s hard-pressed air defense units struggling to crash them. This forces Kiev to fall on their valuable stock of nozzles and air rockets to the air to make them recorded.
“So if the drones go like a swarm, they destroy all air anti-air missiles,” he says.
Hence President Green permanent complaints In Ukraine Allies to do more for the protection of her sky. Not only with Patriot rockets – of vital to combat the most dangerous Russian ballistic threat – but also with a wide range of other systems.
On Thursday, the British government said she would sign an agreement on defense with Ukraine to provide more than 5,000 air defense projectiles.
Kiev will ask for many more such contracts in the coming months.
EPA
