Number of Russian kamikaze drone launches against Ukraine quadrupled this year - Media
Kyiv • UNN
In the first 10 months of this year, Russia launched over 44,000 Shahed drones against Ukraine, which is four times more than in the entire year 2024. About 64% of these drones were destroyed, indicating the strain on Ukraine's air defense.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the number of Russian drone launches against Ukraine in the first 10 months of this year was 303% higher than in the entire year 2024. This is reported by UNN with reference to Sky News.
Details
Russia's use of Shahed-type kamikaze drones in Ukraine has sharply increased this year. According to CSIS, Russia launched over 44,000 Shahed drones and their variants, which is more than four times the number of launches in 2024.
About 64% of them were destroyed, compared to 68% in 2024, as the scale of attacks stretches Ukraine's air defense capabilities.
Despite the exponential increase in launches, Ukraine manages to intercept a significant portion of Shahed-type drones.
Sky News international correspondent John Sparks visited eastern Ukraine to see how Ukrainian military personnel are fighting enemy drones with drones, intercepting Russian Shaheds before they can attack. Civilians face a growing threat from drones.
But the more drones Russia sends, the harder it is for Ukrainian air defense systems to intercept them all. And when so-called "kamikaze drones" fly through, the damage they cause is significant, and the loss of life can be great.
Data from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine show the devastating civilian casualties from Russian missile and drone attacks in Ukraine this year. From January to September 2025, at least 494 civilians died from missiles and kamikaze drones such as Shahed.
The UN introduced a system for tracking missiles and loitering munitions in 2025, so historical data comparisons are not possible. The figures show how Russia's expanded drone campaign has increased pressure on Ukraine's defenses, and casualties are increasingly measured in civilian lives.
Russia began receiving batches of Shahed drones from Iran after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and began domestic production of drones, naming them "Geran-1" (Shahed-131) and "Geran-2" (Shahed-136). Rickard and Charlie Valentine, explosives experts at EODynamics, explain that Russia is constantly adapting the Shahed design.
Geran 2 is a copy, but they modified it by adding different warheads. Russia adapts the options they created to a specific strike
Initially, Shahed drones used a high-explosive warhead weighing approximately 50 kg, but after the start of domestic production in Russia, 90 kg warheads were added.
Rickard explains that a common warhead variant used in Shahed drones is a fragmentation-high-explosive one, aimed at maximizing fragmentation damage to personnel.
Thermobaric warheads, designed for maximum explosive effect on buildings and fortified positions, were also used.
The development of domestic drone production lines means that Russia can adapt its drone production capabilities relatively easily and cheaply.
It is obvious that Russia has been conducting massive Shahed launches over the past few months... This means that there has been a significant increase in production and launch capabilities
In July, Russian state media broadcast footage from the Shahed production plant in the Alabuga special economic zone (SEZ) in Tatarstan.
The plant in Alabuga reportedly intends to produce 25,000 drones per year.
According to estimates by the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine in August, Russia planned to produce 79,000 Shahed-type drones in 2025.
Addition
In Warsaw, they decided not to wait for the development of a "drone wall" by the European Union, announcing the creation of a national system to counter "uninvited" aircraft. The cost of the new system for detecting, jamming, and neutralizing enemy drones will be announced in November.