Ukraine Just MASTERED Something So TERRIFYING…It’s Tearing Russia Apart

They started as oddities, little flying pests that could do some minor damage, but would clearly make no difference in the Ukraine war.

But times have changed.

Drones have changed, too.

From oddities to essentials, Ukraine’s drones have now become the most important weapon that the country has in its defense against Russia.

And in this video, we’re going to take you inside the drone unit that has turned hunting Russia into a 24/7 McDonald’s operation.

The drone unit is the Lazar Group, and that group has a surprisingly strange history.

On January 16th, the Wall Street Journal enjoyed the privilege of being one of the few Western media outlets that the Lazar Group has allowed into its domain.

Operating inside a secret bunker, dozens of Ukraine’s top drone operators work in cycles, ensuring that Russia’s forces can never escape the scourge of the flying menaces that are doing too much damage to Putin’s efforts to invade.

This is a 24/7 operation that is deadly efficient and has been built on the back of a McDonald’slike model in which every person in the bunker serves a purpose and all work toward a singular goal.

For McDonald’s, it’s selling burgers.

For Ukraine, the model is all about pushing more Russian troops into the meat grinder.

The Lazar group’s results have been spectacular, as you’ll learn a little later in the video.

However, the unit’s formative days were unlike anything that you might expect from a group that has become one of the most important parts of Ukraine’s military.

The Lazar Group wasn’t founded by some technical genius.

It certainly wasn’t created by those serving in Ukraine’s military.

Rather, the group was the brainchild of somebody who you might never expect to be at the helm of one of Ukraine’s most effective units, Pavlo Yelazarov, a former television talk show producer turned military mover and shaker.

Perhaps this evolution isn’t as much of a surprise as it seems to be on the surface.

After all, Ukraine’s president Vadomir Zalinski was famously a comedian with no political experience who has become the brave face of an entire country that is fighting against Putin’s aggression.

Far from being an outlier, Forbes reported in October, Yelazar is the founder of one of the many effective structures Ukraine has used in its war against Russia that were built by civilians.

The former TV producer who worked on a television show fittingly called Freedom of Speech, made his big move when Russia’s invasion hit his home in Pachesque, which is in central Ke.

As explosions shook the ground outside his home, Yelisarov realized that a war that he never believed would happen had arrived.

He became glued to the television news, tracking every minute of the invasion until he finally felt the need to act.

Picking up the telephone was Yelazarov’s first major contribution to the war effort.

He called the former Ukrainian defense minister, Alexe Resnikov, with no expectation that he would ever get an answer.

But Resnikov picked up.

Soon after he made the call, the TV producer enlisted in Ukraine’s new 126th Territorial Defense Battalion, where he was tasked with defending the Darnitzia district from the Russian invasion.

With his AK-47 in his hands, Yelazarov started organizing people and resources.

He built checkpoints, sourced equipment, and repaired the creaking battalion headquarters that had been formed in a kindergarten building.

It was likely at this time that Yelazarov realized that he could contribute more.

The TV producer had the equivalent of $1.

1 million in cold hard cash.

He spent more than $400,000 of that money during the first month or so of serving as a territorial defender.

By early April, the fighting in Kev had stopped and Yelazarov was fortunate enough not to have seen combat during those early weeks of the war.

As it turned out, Ukraine was also fortunate.

Next up for the former TV producer was a visit to a newly formed unit of Ukraine’s special operations forces dubbed the White Wolves and operating in Zaparisia.

That unit was the first to show Yelazarov how drones could be used in combat.

A new idea formed and it would become the seed from which the Lazar group was born.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yelazarov purchased an agricultural drone from a group of smugglers who had previously used the machine to sneak cigarettes over the border.

We strapped a 120 mm mortar shell to it.

We carried out the first use, Yelazarov tells the outlet.

We were thrilled with it.

The Wall Street Journal shares what appears to be the footage of that first use shot directly by the drone.

Hovering over a target, the drone carrying the mortar is locked in.

Hit it comes the command.

The mortar falls, the target explodes, and in an instant, Yazarov must have realized that Ukraine had a lowcost and extremely effective weapon in his hands.

Before the summer of 2022, the Lazar group in its earliest guys had been formed.

Working out of a garage that belonged to one of the drone operators who joined the new unit, Yelazarov spent the remaining $680,000 he had in his personal war chest to buy spare parts from China that his team used to start assembling drones.

With the new drone developed, Yelazarov donated his own Starlink terminal to be used during its first flight.

The drone was destroyed, but the TV producer knew that he had an idea worth building upon.

More innovations and growth followed.

One of Yelazarov’s civilian acquaintances named Mustafa Naimm, who was then Ukraine’s deputy minister of infrastructure, provided the new Lazar group with four new Starlink terminals.

Yelazarov’s group also started experimenting with their drones, with a breakthrough arriving when the group started stuffing 12.

5 battery packs into drones that previously used two.

I didn’t understand why a drone should operate for half an hour, at most an hour per shift.

Yelazarov says a battery pack then cost $1,300.

So adding them meant an additional $20,000 per drone.

Expensive, but the investment paid off.

Yelazarov tells Forbes, adding, “With such a drone, a pilot could strike 16 pieces of equipment overnight, not two.

” The work continued, and as the Lazar Group grew, the concept of a McDonald’s for drones took flight.

“I’m lazy.

I don’t like to work.

” Yazarov joked to Forbes when talking about his managerial style.

Rather than being super hands-on, the former TV producer saw his key task following his massive monetary investment as building the right team to turn the Lazar Group’s drone-based destruction into a welloiled machine.

That’s how McDonald’s works.

The manager takes care of the day-to-day oversight, while the team that they hire runs the business like clockwork.

Yelazarov’s idea of the right team is one that is made up of almost entirely civilians, which is yet another break from what most would see as military tradition.

A staggering 98% of the people brought into the group were former civilians, such as a woman named Nallayia, who headed an administrative service at a regular company before she joined the Lazar Group.

Another of Yelazarov’s master strokes has been to form an intelligence team within the Lazar Group that dictates how drones and ammunition are distributed to drone operators.

That team is staffed not by members of Ukraine’s intelligence community, but by financial analysts who use their understanding of how to move money to ensure drones get to the places they need to be.

The Lazar Group had 30 pilots as of October 2025.

Yazarov plans to triple that number.

For as non-traditional as the Lazar group may be, it’s been able to reach dizzying heights because its leader doesn’t shut the group off from Ukraine’s military.

Former civilians may be operating inside the bunker, but Yelazarov’s group has been absorbed into Ukraine’s National Guard, where it became one of the first official drone units of Ukraine’s military.

Yelazarov could be forgiven for resting on his laurels after achieving something that has been so momentous for Ukraine.

But that isn’t the former TV producers style.

As much as he may joke about not wanting to work hard, he is one of the main minds behind Ukraine’s emerging army of drones concept with one of the many ways that he supports that idea being the inclusion of the Lazar group in an initiative where drone operators can earn prizes for killing Russian soldiers.

The Telegraph reported on this concept on January 25th, revealing that operators get 12 points for killing a Russian occupier, 100 for destroying a helicopter, and 120 if they take a hostage using their drone.

Those points are spendable on new drone equipment through Ukraine’s Brave One marketplace, creating a gamified cycle that is just one more example of how Ukraine has used innovation ahead of firepower to defend itself against Russia.

A member of the Lazar group, who uses the call sign Phoenix, told the Telegraph, “It’s about competition between units.

Everyone wants to be on top.

” Strange it may seem, but Phoenix’s unit placed fourth on the Initiative’s leaderboard in 2025, and he is clearly motivated to climb the ranks by scoring more drone kills in 2026.

Today, the Lazar Group has its operations refined to a science.

Starlink provides communication with control centers all across Ukraine, which enables the unit’s drones to fly over large distances while staying at the low altitudes needed to avoid Russia’s air defense systems.

Crews operating on the ground pair with a drone operator and a navigator at the control center with the former providing intelligence to the latter who fly hundreds of missions every single night.

This is efficiency the likes of which even McDonald’s would be envious of and the results can’t be denied.

Yelazar of himself provides the raw numbers when speaking to the Wall Street Journal.

His group’s meticulous records arrive daily, allowing for the accurate recording of everything Lazar’s drone operators accomplish.

As of January 16th, 2,96 Russian tanks have fallen victim to the Lazar group’s drones.

Yazarov claims a staggering 3,150 of Russia’s armored vehicles are now little more than burned out husks abandoned on the battlefield due to the efforts of this one drone unit.

And Lazar Group keeps on going.

765 units of Russia’s self-propelled artillery units have met the Lazar drones.

Around 5,500 cargo trucks have discovered that the aerial threat that lurks in the night is as happy to target them as it is to take out Russia’s armor.

Add all of this to the rest of the equipment that the Lazar group has destroyed with its drones and you get a massive number, 24,000 units of equipment.

Beyond costing Russia equipment that it intended to use for everything from assaults on Ukraine’s defenses to logistics within occupied Ukraine, the Lazar Group’s efforts have also indirectly taken billions of dollars out of Putin’s invasion fund.

According to a January 18th Army Inform report, the Lazar Group has managed to destroy more than a staggering $15 billion worth of Russian equipment since Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022.

This number doesn’t come from Yelazarov himself.

Rather, it’s the spokesperson of Ukraine’s National Guard, Roslam Muzichuk, who has revealed just how effective the Lazar group has been.

“We are developing unmanned systems units, and Lazar’s group is one of the most effective in Ukraine.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, they have destroyed equipment worth over $15 billion,” Muzichuk reported.

More will come.

In fact, it already has.

On the very same day that Muzichuk shared the $15 billion figure, Defense Express reported that the group’s drone operators had managed to disable another 13 pieces of Russian equipment in the Leman sector of the Ukraine war, which is where Ukraine’s Third Army Corps operates.

Working in tandem with that core, the Lazar Group managed to destroy a fuel tanker, a pair of cargo trucks, and 10 armored fighting vehicles.

Fast forward to February 2nd, and the group was at it again.

This time the Lazar group managed to take out a heavy flamethrower system named the TOS1A Salt Septyok which was located in the Belgod region of Russia.

All it took was four precise FPV drones.

Now the flamethrower is destroyed.

All of these are equipment kills that Yelazarov can add to the Lazar group’s ledger.

And in the future, he tells the Wall Street Journal he wants to do whatever he can to help NATO members develop similar capabilities.

But before we get to that claim, we need to dig deeper into what the Lazar Group really represents.

This is no civilian unit that is sort of helping out while the Ukrainian military does all of the hard work.

The Lazar Group has changed the face of war, transforming drones from experimental weapons into indispensable assets.

The innovation both in thinking and equipment that has allowed the Lazar Group to become what it has is still very much alive in Ukraine.

Drones have changed warfare forever to the point where their existence has had an enormous impact not only on strategy but on the psychological aspects of war.

Anybody who has seen footage of one of Ukraine’s FPV drones bearing down on a Russian soldier will be able to tell you that whereas before Putin’s invasion, soldiers had to worry primarily about artillery, mortars, and what was deemed more advanced equipment such as aircraft and the missiles they carry, now it’s drones that are the constant threat.

Any soldier, be they Russian or Ukrainian, who finds themselves in even semi-open territory, now knows that a reconnaissance drone may be hovering overhead.

An FPV drone may be on its way.

Zones previously thought to be at least somewhat safe are now death traps.

As the National Interest put it in June 2025, “Small and highly maneuverable quadcopters operated by pilots wearing VR goggles.

The kamicazi drones proved cheap and highly effective for offering stealthy, precise, and psychologically damaging impacts, forcing troops to constantly scan the skies for these tiny invaders.

The mental toll must be immense.

And the innovations continue to come.

No longer limited to the skies, Ukraine’s drones are destroying targets in the water.

Ukraine, despite having a very limited navy of its own, has managed to take out about a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

And many of those warships were struck by drones.

Ukraine has managed to sneak drones into Russia itself, as it did during the daring operation spiderweb to attack air bases and Russian aircraft.

And 2025 has been the breakout year for Ukraine’s long range drones, which had cost Russia 74.

1 billion or a little over 4% of the country’s gross domestic product between January and August alone.

In one case, a drone was even able to airdrop an electric bicycle to a wounded Ukrainian soldier who then used the bike to cycle away from danger.

The Lazar group isn’t responsible for all of these innovations, of course.

It’s more focused on destroying as many of Russia’s forces in Ukraine as it can.

But Yelazarov was one of the people who laid the groundwork for what has become the new way of war.

It’s no wonder that both Russia and Ukraine are in a race to build more and better drones.

Each time one side comes up with another concept, the other replies with its own.

A deadly machine focused fencing match is underway, and Ukraine seems to be staying ahead.

In November, Forbes reported that Russia was trying to transform its drone strategy by placing its focus on reusable drones ahead of the kamicazi drones that both sides use on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The Russian military has even released footage of what it claims to be reusable interceptor drones that it claims can stop Ukraine’s long-range drones with methods as ridiculous as dropping a can of stew on it.

How legitimate such claims are is a matter of debate, especially as they come from Russia.

However, Ukraine has replied by increasing the effectiveness of its frontline drones.

Now, those drones are killing Russia’s soldiers almost as fast as Putin is able to recruit new forces to head into battle.

The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Alexander Serski, said in January that December alone brought 33,000 confirmed Russian losses caused by drones at a time when Russia was recruiting about 36,000 soldiers per month.

The drone race is one that both Ukraine and Russia are determined to win.

And that brings us back to Yelazarov in his comments about NATO.

While Ukraine and Russia are locked in this new form of warfare, NATO’s members, particularly those in Europe, are a long way behind.

Europe has already lost two years of let’s say preparation for real war.

Yelazarov tells the Wall Street Journal when speaking about his desire to take the Lazar group operation global.

What happens is just empty talk, empty words like drones are good.

There is absolutely nothing behind those words in Europe in their defense ministries.

It’s a damning indictment of the state of Europe’s collective preparedness for a drone war the likes of that seen in Ukraine.

However, it’s not altogether inaccurate.

There has indeed been a lot of talk about drones in Europe, though little in the way of action beyond promises to invest money in manufacturing, often in partnership with Ukraine.

There is talk about developing a drone wall to guard parts of Europe, though there is little information about how this type of wall would work or if Europe is even capable of building it.

Sure, there is talk about this war, but even the European Parliament says that the $7 billion European drone defense initiative that is supposed to provide a cuttingedge interoperable system for countering and deploying drones won’t be fully functional until the end of 2027.

All of this talk is happening as Russia continues to test European responses with its longrange drones, with such incursions typically prompting responses from rapid response fighter jets.

The UK’s own Royal Air Force quick reaction alert team in Losy Mouth has been deployed 76 times since 2018 with 41 of those occasions being related to Russian military aircraft perhaps including drones.

NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutter is certainly in no doubt about Europe not being ready for a fight with Russia.

Speaking in Brussels toward the end of January, Rut said, “If anyone thinks that Europe can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming.

You can’t.

We can’t.

We need each other.

” Rut was talking about the sheer power that the US brings to a war, but his overarching point is that Europe needs to do more to prepare for Russia.

Just as Yelazarov says, “Our innovation is our only salvation in this war.

” Yelazarov concludes when speaking to the Wall Street Journal.

The drones will change as they already have changed everything on the battlefield.

This can no longer be denied and that’s the future of all wars.

I mean, look, the world will never be the same again.

Yelazarov is right and he believes that NATO, particularly the organization’s European members, need to stop talking and start acting.

That’s what Yelazarov did.

And for now, the Lazar group has turned hunting Russian forces into a business.

And business is booming.

They started as oddities, little unmanned flying machines that Ukraine used to take out soldiers and Russian armor.

Putin thought that Russia’s sheer might would overcome, but he was wrong.

Ukraine went from drone users to masters of the drone war.

Now what Ukraine figured out is tearing Russia’s front lines apart.

And there’s one number that explains why.

80%.

That number is important because as Ukraine’s president Vladimir Zalinski said on January 26th, Ukraine’s drones are now responsible for the destruction of 80% of Russian targets in the Ukraine war.

We’ll explain what that means in terms of pure numbers in a moment.

However, Zilinski was quick to point out that Ukraine’s evolution and its ability to stay one step ahead of Russia on the battlefield is what allowed this to happen.

Drones have become Ukraine’s most important weapon, and the sheer scale of their use is also aiding Ukraine in making better and more efficient use of the other weapon systems that it deploys against Russia, along with the very soldiers who are fighting tooth and nail to prevent Russia from taking the country’s territory.

Today, artillery matters, but in a different way.

personnel and above all our infantry carry out fundamental tasks, Zilinsky noted.

But war itself is undergoing an evolution and everything is becoming extremely dependent on another important element as well on who is the fastest and the strongest in applying technologies in adapting technologies and in truth verification of what is happening on the battlefield.

That mention of verification brings us to the question of how Ukraine knows what its drones are destroying.

The answer is that the very drones it uses are filming everything so that Ukraine has proof to back its claims.

Business Insider has more comments from Zalinski, who provides a basic overview of the system that Ukraine is using to verify its drone strikes.

Each of these strikes is recorded, which helps not only with hit verification, but also with the operation of the bonus-based system for assessing military performance.

Ukraine’s president pointed out he’s talking about a relatively new system that Ukraine has introduced in which the country’s drone units are able to earn points for each battlefield kill they’re able to record using their drones.

These points can be amassed and then spent in Ukraine’s Brave One marketplace, which offers drone operators access to new drones and equipment they can use to enhance their efficiency as killing machines.

It’s the gamification of warfare made real.

And though it may seem like something out of a warped, dystopian future, this system showcases just how innovative Ukraine can be in terms of both rewarding its soldiers and ensuring that false information isn’t allowed to pollute the airwaves of online channels.

The Guardian reported on Ukraine’s points for kill system in early November.

It recounted information delivered by the man who was then Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister and is now perhaps uncoincidentally Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mikyo Federov.

The man behind Ukraine’s new system explained in November that the idea had grown to the point that 400 of Ukraine’s drone units were taking part.

That’s massive growth considering the number of units was just 95 in August.

The drone operators racking up their points can spend them on over 100 different drones, autonomous vehicles, and other drone related materials, better off told the Guardian.

There’s even a leaderboard.

Getting to the top is an extra bit of motivation for Ukrainian soldiers who want to do whatever they can to stop Russia in its tracks.

It’s become truly popular among units, better off told the Guardian, adding, “All the defense forces know about this, and there’s competition for the points for getting these drones, electronic warfare systems, and other things to help them in war fighting.

The more infantry you kill, the more drones you get to kill more infantry.

This is becoming kind of a self-reinforcing cycle.

Further emphasizing how important drones have become to Ukraine’s strategy against Russia.

Zilinsky also took the opportunity to reward some of the country’s leading drone commanders at an event where he highlighted the 80% figure.

The Order of the Gold Star, which is also known as the Hero of Ukraine Medal and is among the country’s highest military honors, went to two commanders of Ukrainian drone units.

Lieutenant Colonel Ole Vit of the 427th Separate Brigade, also known as Raro, received the honor, as did Major Yuri Federenko of Ukraine’s 429th Separate Brigade, which is perhaps better known as the Achilles Brigade.

It’s no surprise that these two men received their medals.

Their units combined to destroy more than 42,000 enemy targets, Uramidan press reports.

And that brings us nicely back to something we mentioned we’d tell you earlier in the video.

We know that Ukraine’s drones are now responsible for destroying 80% of the Russian targets being taken out in the war.

However, that wouldn’t mean much if it was 80% of 100 targets.

Context matters and when it comes to the scale of Russian losses, the numbers are massive.

In 2025 alone, Ukraine’s drones struck almost 820,000 targets, which is a number so huge that Putin must be wondering what he can possibly do to bring it back down.

Most of these strikes have been recorded and verified, often using the firstperson view cameras built into most of Ukraine’s drones, the president of Ukraine’s website says.

Interestingly, this revelation of how many targets Ukraine’s drones struck in 2025 also leads us to understand how many targets the country has verified that it hit in total during the last year.

Dividing 820,000 by 0.

8 gives us a grand total of 1.

025 million targets hit.

And remember, these are just the targets that Ukraine has been able to verify.

But even with this number, we can tell that Ukraine hit an average of 85,416 Russian targets per month in 2025, which breaks down to a little over 2,800 targets daily.

In other words, Russia is getting hit over 100 times per hour as it tries to break Ukraine’s defenses, which likely goes a long way toward explaining why Russia’s gains have been so slow and small over the last 4 years.

And it gets worse for Russia.

What we’re seeing right now is that Ukraine’s monthly numbers are rising, which means that it’s more than possible that Ukraine’s drones will crack a million targets destroyed in 2026.

It’s unknown if the 2025 number also includes Russian Shahid drones taken out by Ukraine’s unmanned aerial vehicles, but that’s a topic to which we’ll return when we examine how important drones have become to Ukraine on the defensive side of things.

As for the monthly numbers rising, Zilinsky himself hinted at this when he shared Russia’s confirmed death toll for December as a result of Ukraine’s drone strikes.

Our bonus-based electronic point system is working to scale up the results of our defense.

In December, our units achieved a result of 35,000 neutralized occupiers.

Thank you for this result, Delinsky said.

I’ll repeat that.

35,000 Russian soldiers dead, not injured, in a single month.

This is a record-breaking number, and it comes off the back of two other months where Ukraine’s drone kill count was enormous.

As Zalinsky revealed in early January, Ukraine’s drone operators managed to eliminate 26,000 Russian soldiers in October, followed by 30,000 in November.

The numbers are rising by an average of 4,500 Russians killed by drones per month, which has to be terrifying for Putin as he struggles with finding competent manpower to send into Ukraine.

Forc’s news has even more numbers for December.

In addition to repeating the figures that Zalinsky shared, the outlet adds that what appears to now be a kill rate of between 30,000 and 40,000 per month is high enough that Russia is likely no longer recruiting enough soldiers to make up for it substantial losses in Ukraine.

It also adds further context, noting that Russia losing soldiers in this volume means that Putin is allowing what amounts to be the equivalent of half of the UK army’s full-time personnel to be wiped out every single month.

Unsustainable is one word that we could use to describe this.

Absolute insanity seems like the more accurate term.

Forces News also notes that Ukraine struck a total of 107,000 targets with its drones in December alone, which is also a month that saw Russia lose 128 of its air defense systems.

Ukraine says that it’s given itself a new target to hit 50,000 Russian troops eliminated using drones every single month.

And the scariest thing for Putin is that this is a very achievable target.

After all, it’s not like Ukraine is going to be running out of drones anytime soon.

As former Forbes correspondent David Axe claimed in March 2025, Ukraine started 2025 with a target of producing 4.

5 million drones per year.

It may not have quite hit that target, though it’s difficult to tell.

Business Insider says that the number was actually 2.

5 million FPV drones, which means we have a contradiction.

However, the same outlet also notes that other estimates matched to the 4.

5 million figure that Ax shared and that this number may be Ukraine’s current drone manufacturing capacity, if not the number of drones built.

We don’t know for sure because there have been no manufacturing numbers shared by official Ukrainian sources.

However, either 2.

5 million or 4.

5 million is a huge number when you consider what we shared earlier about Ukraine carrying out a million drone strikes in 2025.

It’s also a number that Uramidan Press reports is going to get a whole lot bigger.

On January 26th, Uridan Press reported that Ukraine’s drone manufacturing volume has roughly doubled every year since 2023.

And for 2026, the outlet claims Ukraine is shooting for the production of 7 million drones.

This will be a costly annual production run.

Ukraine will need $120 billion to build and acquire 7 million drones, about half of which will come from a combination of Ukraine’s own budget and loans backed by the European Union.

The other half will have come from Ukraine’s allies in the form of military assistance.

But if Ukraine can put all of the pieces together, any hope Putin had that the Russian death count will go down will be squashed as Ukraine will have plenty of drones to achieve its new target of 50,000 eliminations per month.

Quick side note, there’s a whole lot more where this came from.

So, if you’re getting value from the military show and you want to hear about more statistics like this, don’t forget to subscribe.

With the numbers covered, we can return to something we touched on earlier.

We mentioned that it’s unclear whe the number of targets that Ukraine’s drones have destroyed included the elimination of Russian unmanned aerial vehicles during the Kremlin ordered drone and missile assaults that battered Ukraine throughout 2025.

Whether they did or didn’t is largely immaterial as what matters more is the point that Ukraine doesn’t just use its drones to inflict massive losses on the military.

Ukraine uses drones for defense and 2026 may be a gamecher in terms of how effective Ukraine becomes at using its drones to intercept Russia’s shahid type strike drones.

Again, Zalinsky touched on this in his January 26th address where he emphasizes the importance of Ukraine’s continued development of technologies that it can use to take out Russia’s shahiti type drones.

There’s one technology on which Ukraine will be focusing in particular.

So keep watching to find out what that is.

Before that, Zalinski is certainly right about the scale and danger of the Russian Shahid problem.

We learned that from an analytical review of Russia’s Shahid strategy in 2025, which was written by Igor Anukin and published by the Institute for Science and International Security.

In his analysis, Anukin said that the size of Russia’s shahid type drone waves varied throughout 2025 with some attacks including several dozen drones while others included swarms so massive that 800 drones were used.

Many of these drones were launched alongside crews and ballistic missiles from the occupied regions of Crimea and Donetsk.

Anokin added.

He also delivered numbers.

54,538 Shahid type drones launched in 2025 with about 32,200 of them being strike drones.

Presumably, the others were decoy Shahid types sent to confuse or wear down Ukraine’s air defenses.

Regardless, Russia has been attacking everything that it can with its longrange drones.

Its strikes were widespread, covering many of the regions that Russia’s ground forces are trying to occupy.

In addition to occasionally seeing Russian drones enter the territories of other countries, such as Poland, Romania, and Muldova.

Though Russia would claim to be hitting military targets, many of its Shahid types instead attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure, particularly toward the end of 2025, industrial facilities, and residential buildings.

The scale of Russia’s Shahid strikes peaked in July when it launched an average of 203 of these types of drones at Ukraine daily.

However, the following months were almost as damaging with the average varying between 133 and 188 drones per day for the months after July.

In short, Russia’s Shahid type drones are a serious problem for Ukraine.

But as with so many of the problems that Putin’s strategy presents, Ukraine has come up with new ways to handle it that just so happen to include the use of its own drones.

Interceptor drones are the next big thing for Ukraine, as evidenced by the September 2025 announcement that the UK was going to start mass-producing one of these drones of Ukrainian design, the use in defending against Russia’s Shahid strikes.

These special kinds of drones do what their name implies.

They take to the skies and intercept incoming strike drones.

On January 20th, the Kev Post published these interceptor drones were going to become part of what it dubbed an anti- drone dome, which will also include mobile defense teams.

These teams will work in tandem with Ukraine’s drone operators to provide a powerful short-range defense against Russia’s Shahid types.

Fedov was among those who introduced the new system, stating, “Our task is to build an anti- drone dome over Ukraine, a system that does not react after the fact, but destroys the threat even during its approach.

” The implication here is that Ukraine expects Russia to either maintain or intensify its long-range strikes in 2026.

Ukraine is responding and intercepted drones are going to be a huge part of its new defensive strategy.

If the Shahi types that these interceptor drones destroy are counted towards Ukraine’s total for 2026, then it seems almost certain that a million or more Russian targets will be destroyed by Ukraine’s drones in 2026.

That’s especially the case when taking Ukraine’s new goal of eliminating more than 50,000 Russian troops monthly into account.

However, that’s all for the future.

Returning to what Ukraine achieved in 2025 with its drone strikes, we’re seeing several battlefield impacts that have resulted.

Among them is the fact that Ukraine’s drones are causing the attrition of Russia’s munitions at a scale never before seen.

That’s according to Uramidan Press, which reported on January 27th, that the Kremlin has placed an order for 1.

1 million new artillery rounds.

That alone wouldn’t be newsworthy.

But what’s notable here is that Russia is focusing on the acquisition of longrange artillery rounds because Ukraine’s FPV drone walls have forced it to pull its artillery so far back that it’s becoming ineffective.

Short-range rounds aren’t cutting it anymore.

Russia is losing artillery systems to Ukraine’s drones.

And when those systems try to fire from their pulled back positions, Russia is also losing shells that fail to reach their targets.

Of the 1.

1 million rounds ordered, a million are for special 152 mm MSTA rounds that contain a special propellant charge that allows them to travel over larger distances.

The other 100,000 are for long range variants.

What matters here is the cost.

As reported by Uramidan Press, a standard MSTA artillery round costs Russia $1,250.

The version with the propellant charge costs $1,550.

That’s a $300 difference.

And when you multiply that by a million shells, you get a $300 million expenditure that has been caused mostly by Ukraine’s FPV drones taking out Russian artillery and crews that dare come within range of the targets that the drones are protecting.

If Ukraine can’t eliminate artillery from the field, it can make the use of it cost more than ever for Russia.

But when we’re speaking about attrition, we inevitably have to come back to the sheer scale of the losses that Ukraine has inflicted on Russia with its drones.

We’ve already discussed the monthly figures and Ukraine’s goal of raising those figures using its drones.

For Russia, these losses may be leading it toward a breaking point from which there is no return.

That’s the opinion of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter, who said in January that up to 25,000 Russian soldiers are being killed by Ukraine every single month.

That estimate is lower than the numbers Ukraine itself shares, though it’s still more than enough to cause serious manpower problems for Putin.

Ruter explained that a single month of fighting in Ukraine now costs Russia about 10,000 more soldiers than its entire campaign against Afghanistan during the decadel long war Russia waged in that country.

Now they lose this amount or more in one month, Rut said when comparing Russia’s 15,000 losses in Afghanistan, what it’s experiencing in Ukraine, so that’s also unsustainable on their side.

The emphasis on Russian soldiers killed rather than wounded is also important.

Another thing that can be attributed to Ukraine’s drones.

According to Ukraine today, the traditional death to injury ratio that an invading force should experience is one death for every three injuries.

That isn’t Russia’s ratio.

By the end of 2025, the outlet reports that Russia’s share of dead soldiers amounted to 56% of its total casualties.

That means more Russian soldiers are being killed than wounded, with the ratio now standing at 12 killed for every 10 wounded.

Russia has contributed to the situation by failing to evacuate the wounded and using tactics forced upon it by the depletion of its armor, which is another thing for which Ukraine can thank its drones.

However, it’s Ukraine’s use of drones and clever innovations such as the gamification that we talked about earlier that is making the big difference.

It all adds up to Ukraine turning the territory that Russia wants to capture into a hellscape for Russia’s forces.

Now, any soldier who ventures anywhere within 10 mi of the combat lines is at risk of being destroyed by one of Ukraine’s drones.

And if Ukraine has its way in 2026, we haven’t seen anything yet with its 2025 numbers.

All of this discussion about drones, and we haven’t even covered the longrange unmanned aerial vehicles that Ukraine used to wreak havoc on Russia in 2025.

But don’t fret, Ukraine is still very much allin on its deep strike strategy.

Unbelievable collapse.

That’s what military analysts are calling Russia’s latest battlefield setback.

Only this time, it’s not about tanks or missiles.

It’s about drones.

In a war already defined by the rise of cheap loitering munitions and swarm tactics, Ukraine has just flipped the script with a new innovation, interceptor drones.

Fast, cheap, scalable, and brutally effective, these small UAVs are turning Russia’s once unstoppable drone offensive into a very expensive problem.

And they’ve caught Putin completely offguard.

Now, the ever ingenious Ukrainians have come up with a counter measure that flips the equation on its head once more.

Interceptor drones.

They’ve caught Russian President Vladimir Putin offguard and have him scrambling to come up with a solution to this new problem.

Now, prior to this development, the most influential drones have been the Iranian-made Shahhead family of drones.

Operating like a small cruise missile but for a fraction of the cost, these longrange kamicazi loitering munitions have upended the air defense calculus that has stood for decades.

Traditional surfaceto-air systems like the US’s Patriot and German Iris T systems have proven effective at shooting down the relatively slowmoving SHA heads.

But the missiles they fire cost hundreds of thousands, not millions of dollars each, and are only produced at a rate of several hundred per year.

With Russia filling the Ukrainian skies with between 100 and 600 charad type drones nightly for most of 2025, it becomes unfeasible to use these high-end systems to shoot them down, especially with cruise and ballistic missiles in the nightly mix that also need to be shot down.

But the interceptor drones are small, highly effective, and most importantly, cheap to produce, and easy to scale.

These anti- drone drones may finally provide a solution to the constant menace of the so-called flying lawnmowers, and provide a blueprint for effective anti- drone warfare for militaries around the world in the future.

So, let’s take a closer look at how they work, which systems Ukraine is using, and where these developments might lead.

The Shahhead family of drones produced by Iranian manufacturer Heissa in association with Shahhead Aviation Industries is a relatively new phenomenon with footage of the original variant first appearing in 2021.

Shahhead means witness in the Farsy language of Iran.

The most influential variant to date has been the charad 136 as evidenced by the US reverse engineering it to develop its own one-way attack drone, the lowcost unmanned combat attack system or Lucas.

The Lucas drones are designed for mass deployment, offering a lowcost attractive alternative to high-end platforms like the MQ9 Reaper with a price point of approximately $35,000 per unit.

But in this case, the US is following Russia’s lead.

In 2022, Russia began importing large numbers of Shahhead 136s from Iran for use in Ukraine and then started manufacturing them in Russia from Iranian supplied kits.

Over time, Russia has conducted various modifications and upgrades to the original design, creating a variant known as the Jiren.

At a massive manufacturing plant in Alabuga, Tartastan, development of gerons has scaled up dramatically with Ukrainian intelligence estimating that by the end of 2025, Russia was producing between 170 and 190 of the latest Jiren 2 and Cabera decoy variants daily.

Compared to the Iranian charad 136, the Jiren 2 has been given some significant upgrades.

The Iranian navigation system, which use civilian-grade GPS components, has been replaced with a Russian-made flight control unit and microprocessors that utilize the Russian GLONAS satellite navigation system, enhancing loitering capability and resistance to electronic warfare.

The single piece construction in the Iranian charad has transitioned to a modular design composed of interconnected elements.

The material used in the fuselage has also changed with the original lightweight honeycomb structure replaced by a combination of fiberglass and woven carbon fiber or a foam-like material.

A change believed to streamline large-scale industrial production.

The warhead has also been given a substantial upgrade.

Alongside the original 110 pound high explosive fragmentation payload, Moscow has employed thermobaric incendurary fragmentation, high explosive, high explosive air burst, and even submunition dispersing variants.

The most consequential upgrade, however, is a 200lb warhead introduced in 2024, which combines a penetrator shaped charge with a layer of steel balls to pierce fortified infrastructure and maximize human casualties.

The recent recovery of a Jiren 2 equipped with an Nvidia Jetson Orin computer board and an infrared camera indicates that Russia is experimenting with visual-based navigation or automated target recognition.

Other gerants recovered by Ukraine have been found with Chinese mesh communication modems operating on various frequency bands alongside electrooptical cameras.

Ukrainian specialists say these enable low latency video transmission and chain control, providing communication links across multiple drones.

These developments suggest that the Jiren may soon evolve into a semi-autonomous strike asset with machineass assisted guidance.

To make matters worse, in recent months, Russia has also introduced the Jiren 3, its variant of the rocket powered Iranian charad 238.

With a 10-ft wingspan, 20% larger than the Jiren 2’s 8.

2 in wingspan, and a takeoff weight of 815 lb, it can achieve speeds of 370 mph, roughly triple the speed of its propeller-driven predecessors.

This reduces Ukrainian reaction time and complicates interception by gun-based systems or helicopters which have proven effective and cost-effective against the propeller-driven variants.

The extra speed also improves penetration on impact maximizing the destructive effects of the warhead.

Like the Jiren 2, the Jiren 3 has also been modified significantly from its Iranian base.

It’s powered by a Chinese-made Teleify JT80 turbo jet engine.

Much slower, but also much cheaper than the Charad 238 check engine.

The Jiren 3 also features a reinforced fuselage, redesigned air intakes, and eight control surface actuators compared to the Jiren 2’s four, which should improve stability, maneuverability, and fault tolerance during flight.

Russia has also improved its Jiren tactics, flying at 10,000 ft or more and then plunging down vertically when they reach the target.

These tactics mean the drones fly above the ceiling of anti-aircraft fire and are much more difficult to track and shoot down during their descent.

The additional speed attained by a head-long plunge also adds to the destructive power of the strikes.

The scale of the problems these drones cause for Ukraine can’t be overstated.

More than 38,000 Russian longrange kamicazi UAVs and decoys, the majority of them Jirens and Gabberas, were launched between January and November 2025, with well over 5,000 per month being launched from September onwards.

That represents almost 2/3 of total kamicazi UAV strikes since February 2022, highlighting the rapid acceleration in their use.

For the most part, Ukraine has consistently claimed high results in bringing these relatively slowmoving nuisances down.

The Ukrainian military typically reports bringing down between 80 and 97% of them.

But at current attack rates, that still leaves up to 1,000 gerons successfully hitting targets every month, ranging from military installations and civilian infrastructure like power plants to civilian apartment buildings.

The fact that Ukraine is currently facing 20our blackouts and facing what some have labeled a black winter with minimal power, heat or water is a direct consequence of these strikes.

But they also have a psychological impact.

The relentless stress of hearing gerons, air raid sirens and air defense explosions in the sky, cowering in shelters, fearful of being struck and dealing with the consequences of successful strikes slowly but surely grinds down the morale of the embattled population with an increasing shortage of high-end air defense systems and interceptor missiles available to Ukraine from its NATO partners.

In no small part due to how many have been used up in Ukraine, anti- drone counter measures have of necessity diversified.

Ukraine has responded to the escalation of drone attacks by creating an extensive network of roughly 900 mobile fire groups that hunt down gerants with ground and helicopterbased machine guns, automatic cannons, and portable anti-aircraft missile systems like man pads.

These groups include military and national guard personnel working in conjunction with local radars, thermal and optical surveillance systems, and air defense control centers.

This configuration allows for flexible movement of forces, rapid patching of gaps in defense, and quick response to changes in Russian drone flight paths overnight.

And now they add the interceptor drones to the mix.

Unlike counter drone systems like machine guns which involve scattering fire across a wider range of sky in the hope of hitting gerons, interceptor drones are designed to hunt specific targets with precision much like a Patriot interceptor missile but at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Operators receive target designation from observation post and radars after which the interceptors are launched at them.

This strategy reduces the distance to the interception, thereby increasing the hit rate and effectively forces Russia to fight on the terms of the Ukrainian defense.

Somewhat ironically, the concept of the interceptor drone was inspired by the Russians.

Specifically, they originated as a way of dealing with Russia’s highaltitude surveillance drones on the front lines.

Flying at around 23,000 ft, the Russian high alitude drones were loitering too high for machine guns or shotguns to bring down.

The $100,000 drones were having a serious impact on the battlefield, identifying Ukrainian positions and gaps between them and guiding artillery and drone strikes onto those positions or Russian advances between them.

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