Ukraine began modifying its FPV drones to act as interceptors in 2024.

The interceptor pilots adapting air-to-air dogf fighting tactics became experts in taking out Russian recon drones and was soon reporting taking them down by the hundreds.

So as Russia ramped up its Jiren strikes, it was simply a matter of switching the targets of interceptor drones from reconnaissance drones to gerons.

However, because Jirens at over 400 pounds are much larger than reconnaissance drones and fly higher and faster than the original FPV interceptors, some design modifications were required.

And had these modifications been successful? You bet.

Earlier in 2025, Alexe Rogersin, managing director at TPU, Nagatin Skya, claimed that Ukrainian interceptor drones had downed over 500 gerons under the clear sky initiative to defend Keev using drones guided by radar and visual systems.

In a few months since its launch, the system has intercepted more than 500 Garner attack drones, he said, adding.

In fact, we’re talking about an urban anti- drone dome built on the mass use of smalls size interceptors, primarily FPV drones.

The system includes calculations on vehicles, a monitoring and coordination center, and a training center.

Since then, Ukraine’s use of interceptor drones has ramped up considerably, and they’re only getting started.

By April 2025, Darkstar, a coalition of Ukrainian defense technology groups, was reporting that at least five interceptor models had already brought down charads.

Then in July, Arson Zumadilof, director of Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency, announced that it had signed contracts for tens of thousands of interceptor drones.

Tens of thousands of interceptor drones.

This is what we already have contracted and will continue to contract.

Our contracting now on the one hand depends on the manufacturer’s capacity and on the other hand on the state budget’s capacity.

He told Ukrainian outlet Babel, adding, “We’ll definitely contract everything that the state budget can afford.

” A program called Drone Fall aimed at destroying 5,000 Russian drones with piloted firsterson view drones was established and was later joined by the Comeback Alive Foundation, Ukraine’s biggest crowdfunding organization.

In October, drone force project lead Terrace Timotko said the program was working with 12 to 15 manufacturers and had sponsored drones that had already intercepted more than 3,000 aerial vehicles.

According to Tamotcore, it took nearly a year to build a lowcost interceptor capable of downing Jiren 2, which can fly as fast as 115 mph.

Once they did, they quickly got them into the field, and the designs are now evolving rapidly.

One of the first effective interceptor drones to emerge was the Sting produced by the Wild Hornets volunteer group and unveiled in late 2024.

The group was set up in the spring of 2023 in response to calls by the Ukrainian armed forces for more drones and now produces thousands of various FPV drones per day.

The Sting is an FPV drone propelled by four rotating blades that can reach speeds exceeding 200 mph and altitudes of around 10,000 ft.

It’s based on a standard quadcopter to which an elongated dome-shaped warhead is centrally mounted with a camera on top of the warhead used to guide the UAV during its flight.

The operators controlled the drones, which resembled a handheld missile, and are small enough to fit inside a duffel bag remotely from the ground using VR goggles.

Not only is the Sting much smaller than the Jiren, but it’s also a lot cheaper to produce.

It’s believed to cost around $2,500, while the decoy Gerber cost around $10,000, and Jiren twos and threes can cost anywhere from $30,000 to $75,000.

That means, as Rogoen put it, it’s now more expensive for Russia to attack with Jirens than for Ukraine to defend against them.

Maxon Systems, a company working with Ukrainian governmentbacked innovation driver Brave One, is another company producing interceptor drones for Ukraine.

The company makes semi-autonomous interceptor drones that carry a standard 2.

2 2 lb warhead and come equipped with cameras that home in on their targets at speed of 186 mph.

Co-founder Alex Saltzov told Business Insider in October.

It’s unclear what they’re called or how much they cost, but most interceptor drones are believed to cost less than $6,000.

More recently, Ukrainian company General Cherry announced that its bullet interceptor drone had successfully passed codification and had been officially approved for use by the armed forces of Ukraine.

It’s a welcome conclusion to a high-profile spat between Wild Hornets and General Cherry after the former accused the latter of plagiarizing their designs due to a visual resemblance between prototypes.

General Cherry argued that it distributed multiple variants to more than 20 units at its own expense, allowing soldiers to evaluate the systems under real operational conditions.

Based on this broad testing effort, a final model was selected for codification that differs notably from the version accused of being copied.

The bullet can reportedly reach speeds of over 190 mph, engage targets at a distance of over 12 m, and operates at altitudes of up to 20,000 ft.

It uses specialized aerodynamic solutions and software, incorporating a terminal guidance system, which allows the UAV to adjust its trajectory during the final approach to its Garner target.

Alongside these and other domestically produced interceptor drones, several foreign interceptor drone systems have also already seen combat or are being tested in Ukraine.

And that number looks set to increase dramatically.

That’s in part further evidence of partner nations commitment to Ukraine’s defense and in part down to these nations concerns about their own counter drone defenses as has been evident during the spate of drone incursions across Europe in recent months.

In many cases, local authorities lack lowcost, high efficiency solutions to bring them down, especially above densely populated urban areas.

Lightweight, highly mobile, cost-effective interceptor drones represent low-hanging fruit as an easily scalable solution, especially with much of the testing and refinement having been conducted in Ukraine.

In fact, the first foreign-made interceptor drones may even predate Russia’s initial use of imported Iranian charads.

US company Form Technology has been quietly supplying its drone hunter interceptors to Ukraine since 2022.

In December 2024, Fortm CEO John Gruin told the publication Overt Defense that their interceptors, which fire nets to ent trap the drones rather than exploding, had been successful against charads and many other Russian drones of all sizes.

The company planned to have 400 systems in Ukraine by the end of last year.

Although it’s unclear whether that aim was achieved or whether form is among the 12 to 15 manufacturers currently supplying interceptor drones to the Ukrainian military.

Also in December last year, Bravewood announced successful trials of an advanced interceptor drone developed by German manufacturer Titan Technologies.

The drone has been specifically engineered to intercept charad type drones and Russian reconnaissance UAVs and can reportedly reach speeds of up to 186 mph with a range of almost 12 1/2 miles.

Titan reportedly plans to enhance the drone with an automatic targeting system powered by machine vision technology, further increasing its precision and effectiveness.

In addition to these known implementations and tests, Ukraine also has two massive projects underway with European partners that will undoubtedly light a fire under its interceptor drone production programs.

In September, UK officials announced a joint project with Ukraine to develop the Octopus, a new advanced lowcost interceptor drone.

The drones which will be manufactured in the UK were designed in Ukraine with support from UK scientists and technicians and reportedly already been tested in combat against Russia’s gerons where they were highly effective.

UK Prime Minister Sakir Starmmer called the new partnership a landmark moment bringing together British and Ukrainian ingenuity to deliver cuttingedge defense drone technology to fight back against Russian aggression.

While the specific UK manufacturer was not named in the week before the Octopus announcement, Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturer, UK Spec Systems, announced plans to invest around $271 million in two new drone manufacturing facilities in the UK, a plan that will create hundreds of local jobs.

The UK at the same time announced that it will be funding the delivery of thousands of UK-made longrange attack drones to add to the arsenal that Ukraine uses to attack energy, military, and other infrastructure deep inside Russia.

This combination, interceptor drones and longrange strike drones, is the same output intended to be delivered by another major joint drone production venture between the Netherlands and Ukraine announced in October.

The €200 million euro deal worth about $215 million will see drone production take place at the VDL factory in Bourne Netherlands with the first drone production lines expected to launch within months.

As noted, the partnership will focus on two critical drone types.

Longrange deep strike UAVs capable of hitting targets far behind enemy lines and interceptor drones designed to destroy incoming Russian attack drones.

Manufacturing in the Netherlands offers both nations strategic advantages.

For Ukraine, the production facilities will be protected from Russian, German, and missile strikes that repeatedly targeted Ukrainian defense factories.

At the same time, Dutch manufacturers gain access to drone designs that have proven themselves in the most intense drone warfare the world has ever seen, as does the UK as a result of Project Octopus.

A few months earlier in July, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zalinski announced an ambitious goal of reaching production and deployment of 500 to 1,000 interceptor drones per day.

As of the end of 2025, it’s unclear how close or far away that target is or how these new joint production arrangements change the equation.

It’s also not clear exactly how effective the existing interceptors are proving to be.

There are a lot more claims of high effectiveness than footage to support these claims.

Given that most interceptors seem to have similar camera systems to the FPV drones Ukraine uses on the front lines, footage of successful strikes should be just as easily obtainable.

Some analysts and drone developers have suggested that this is due to secrecy, not wanting to give away to Russian observers how the interceptors work and where they’re fired from.

or their effectiveness is being overstated as hundreds of millions of dollars pour into developing them.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time during this war.

Either way, while interceptor drones certainly have the potential to turn the Jiren equation on its head, both militarily economically, several challenges will have to be overcome before they can make a decisive difference.

Overcoming the Jiren 3, which flies at almost three times the speed of its predecessors and twice the speed of all the interceptor drones we’ve covered, will be foremost among these.

The jet powered drone is also equipped with jamming resistant satellite navigation using a 12 element adaptive antenna array, making immune to the electronic warfare tactics that work against slower shads.

That said, Ukrainian sources have already started sharing images of what they claim are Jiren 3es down by interceptor drones.

As with most advanced weaponry, another key issue is training.

According to Tomotko, hit rates range from 30% for some interceptors to as high as 80 or 90% for the best systems and pilots.

If the drone is not automated, the most crucial part is the skills of the pilot, he said, adding.

If the pilots are trained well, if they have lots of experience with drone interception, they demonstrate n out of 10 results.

Compounding the problem is that only the best drone pilots can master interceptor operations.

The instructor, who goes by the code name Yeti, and who first proposed the interceptor drone concept, said in October that his drone fight club school had trained roughly 5,200 students, but only several dozen had completed interceptor exams, which have just a 30% pass rate.

Still, despite the challenges, the cost efficiency and high volume output of interceptor drones make them for now a no-brainer for both Ukraine and NATO to pursue.

If Ukraine really is achieving an 80% Jiren interception rate with these drones, as some have claimed, the good people of Ukraine can sleep easier at night.

And if $30,000 Gerons can price Patriot missiles out of the defense against them, $2,500 interceptor drones can do the same to Jirens right across all NATO member states.

No doubt as the war progresses, Russia will continue refining its girens to try and combat Ukraine’s interceptor drones and Ukraine’s interceptor drone system will be upgraded accordingly.

When it comes to Ukraine’s unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, much of the focus is on the firsterson view FPV drones that fly directly into their targets before exploding.

These kamicazi drones have dominated the headlines and played a massive part in some of Ukraine’s biggest battlefield victories over the years.

But Kee has another far deadlier weapon in its arsenal.

The heavy bomber drone, boasting numerous benefits over their kamicazi counterparts, heavy bombers are growing in both number and influence.

Ukraine is producing them in the tens of thousands and deploying them far and wide along the front lines to obliterate Russian assault teams and any other enemy targets in their way.

Powerful, reusable, and remarkably efficient, nothing can stop these ruthless, rampant drones raining down fire from above.

And the world got a firstirhand look at exactly what Ukrainian bomber drones can do in a dramatic video posted to the official telegram account of the 42nd mechanized brigade which had been tasked with defending land around the village of Novo Pavlifka in the village of Novo Pavleka in the Nepro Petrosk region.

The video is a montage made up of numerous clips of heavy bombers in action.

Each clip is captured from a drone’s perspective as it hovers above its target, taking up the perfect position before unleashing its payload, leaving nothing but death and destruction in its wake.

In one clip after another, we witness the astonishing killing power of these machines.

Equipped with night and thermal vision cameras, they have no trouble at all spotting enemy soldiers hiding out in tree lines, bushes, or tall grass.

With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, Russians are picked off with ease like fish in a barrel.

Their lives brought to swift and sudden ends as falling bombs, rockets, and grenades explode around them.

But Ukraine saved the most astonishing part for last.

While most of the clips feature bomber drones hunting down and eliminating individual Russian troops or pairs, the end of the montage shows a drone loitering above a much larger concentration of around 20 to 30 troops as they exit a small convoy of vehicles.

Fleeing for their lives, the soldiers scurry about in search of cover.

But the Ukrainian operator doesn’t hesitate.

Dropping a couple of bombs in quick succession, he takes out several Russian troops in the blink of an eye before the video comes to an end.

The 42nd Brigade captioned the video, “Night bomber crews go hunting and turn enemy infantry into mince meat.

” And that sums up exactly what happened quite succinctly.

Every clip shows the devastating impact these drones can have.

And unlike FPV drone videos, which end the moment the drone collides with its target and explodes, these videos allow us to see the aftermath of each strike.

They provide cold hard proof of how much damage was done and how many enemies were eradicated.

The clips also make it easy to understand exactly why Russian soldiers fear these drones so much that they nicknamed them after one of their worst frightening folklore figures, Baba Yaga.

In Slavic mythology, Baba Yaga is a wicked witch who lives in the forest in a bizarre hut with a pair of chicken legs that allow it to move around, flying around after dark and an oversized mortar with a similarly large pestle in her hand.

Many tales involve her capturing and consuming children.

Well, Ukraine’s Baba Yaga drones certainly don’t target children, but they do hunt at night, and they also boast almost otherworldly powers when it comes to chasing down and taking out their targets.

They also come in various forms and are made by a range of different companies with official names like Vampire, R18, Nemesis, and Kazan, but all fall under the Baba Yaga umbrella as far as Russian soldiers are concerned.

Typically fitted with at least six large rotors that allow them to take flight, move at high speeds, and transport relatively heavy payloads, these bomber drones can often cover up to 12 m or 20 km of terrain while carrying around 33 lb or 15 kg of munitions.

Those munitions can include everything from repurposed anti-tank mines to grenades, shaped charges, and even mortar shells, all of which can be dropped from above onto enemy targets with startling precision.

The R18, for example, can hit a single specific square meter of terrain from a height of almost 1,000 ft or 300 m.

That precision is a big reason why Ukraine’s bomber drones are so incredibly efficient and effective at what they do.

They’re highly reliable and perfectly capable of hitting their targets more often than not.

That means more successful missions, fewer wasted resources, and greater enemy losses every single time these drones take to the skies.

And when we look at the cost involved to make and maintain these drones, they become even more impressive.

Skyfall, one of the biggest names in the Ukrainian bomber drone sector, creates vast numbers of these drones each year with a unit cost of approximately $8,500.

That’s considerably more than an FPV drone.

In fact, a Skyfall bomber drone can cost around 16 times more than a kamicazi model.

But when you look at long-term value, the bomber is actually the more cost-effective of the two.

Here’s why.

An FPV drone is a disposable oneanddone device.

It takes off from the ground with the express intent of never returning.

It flies out towards its target, and if everything works out correctly, it collides with it, initiating a single explosion in the process.

A bomber drone, however, is designed to be able to not only take off and take out its targets, but potentially to return to base, land, recharge, reload, and do it all again.

What’s more, a single one of these drones can carry up to four munitions at a time.

So, while an FPV drone deals a single grenades worth of damage to its enemy, a bomber can cause four explosions per sort with the potential to carry out multiple missions before eventually being shot down by the enemy.

Of course, not all bomber drones survive that long.

Some are spotted and eliminated by Russians before they have the chance to deal much or any notable damage, but many manage to at least drop their entire payloads before crushing out.

Thanks to that, these drones are much more cost effective than FPVs.

Indeed, Aer Rosvidka, another of Ukraine’s big bomber drone manufacturers, notes that its R18 octacopter offers one of the most incredible costtoval ratios of any piece of equipment in the entire Ukrainian arsenal.

We calculated that $1 invested in the production of an R18 drone causes $1,000 worth of damage to the enemy.

If a drone hits a piece of equipment, like a tank, it pays for itself in one flight.

After all, destroyed equipment costs millions.

But the equipment we work with cost tens or hundreds of thousands.

And that’s not all.

Another big benefit of these kinds of drones is their ability to linger or loiter in position over their enemies even after an attack.

This is invaluable when it comes to gathering intelligence to inform future decisions.

When you’re working with FPV drones, the crew only sees what the drone sees up to the point of impact.

As soon as the drone clashes with its target, the video feed cuts out.

And even with the high levels of confidence, operators can’t always be completely sure that their attacks were successful.

Sometimes they have to send up secondary surveillance drones just to scan the scene and see how much damage was actually done, which involves more time, effort, and resources.

In stark contrast, bomber drones can drop their bombs and linger in position, continuing to deliver a direct video feed to their pilots, showing the munitions falling towards the ground and allowing them to monitor their impact and assess the amount of damage done.

By carrying out their own battle damage assessment, bomber drones make it much easier for teams to plan out their next steps, deciding whether or not they need to send in additional drones, for example.

This in turn allows for more efficient use of resources and leads to greater successes and fewer failures on the battlefield.

The last big benefit of Baba Yaga drones worth highlighting is their extraordinary ability to hunt at night.

Cheaper, simpler FPV drones can’t always be equipped with high-end camera technology, so often have to be used during the daytime with pilots relying on a standard visual feed to control their drones and spot their targets.

Since more money and time goes into bomber drones, and they’re designed to last a lot longer than FPVs, they’re often fitted with an array of thermal and optical cameras, allowing them to quite literally see in the dark and spot enemy targets, even when wearing camouflage or concealing themselves among the foliage.

The video shared by the 42nd Mechanized Brigade demonstrates how important this is.

As the drones regularly hone in on Russian soldiers lying on the ground, believing they’re hidden and safe, utterly unaware that the final seconds of life are ticking rapidly away.

To make matters worse for Russia and better for Ukraine, these drones are getting even deadlier.

Now, before we get deeper into that, you’re watching the Military Show.

And if you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s the time.

Ukraine didn’t waste any time working on its heavy bomber drone fleet.

Almost immediately after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian defense companies started looking at how they could adapt agricultural and heavy drone platforms for combat purposes.

Soon the first bombers emerged from development.

Skyfall produced the Vampire, for example, a six rotor heavy bomber which officially entered service in 2023.

Other companies and bomber drones soon followed, providing the Ukrainian armed forces with an increasingly destructive and diverse arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles to choose from.

Those drones were soon put to work, carrying out their first missions in places like Daetsk and Kh.

Under cover of nights, they took to the skies using their night and thermal vision cameras to seek out enemy soldiers before eliminating them with ruthless efficiency.

called calculating killers.

These unmatched predators soon earned a fearsome reputation among the Russians who no longer had to worry solely about their enemies FPV drones belining towards their bunkers and vehicles, but were also faced with a new and even more terrifying threat, buzzing beasts that could rain down bombs right onto their heads.

As the years passed and the technology improved, Ukraine also began using its bomber drones during the day with some Russian forces reporting swarms of up to 30 Baba Yaga drones patrolling the skies, scanning their surroundings for any sign of enemy life.

Each one packing enough firepower to take out an entire assault team in a matter of seconds.

Now, day and night, all along the many miles of contested frontline territories, these drones hover and hunt, just waiting to catch a glimpse of any enemy movement.

Their presence not only strikes fear into the heart of Russian troops, but it makes their feeble attempts at assaulting Ukrainian positions even less likely to succeed.

Indeed, Russia’s meat grinder strategy of simply throwing thousands of troops at the Ukrainian defensive line in the hopes that some will eventually break through is becoming more wasteful than ever before.

And the bomber drones are partly to thank for that.

What’s more, the Kremlin has very few ways to deal with this fearsome new threat because even when they come up with some sort of solution, Ukraine always finds a way to cancel it out.

In the early stages, for example, Ukraine didn’t necessarily have the resources or budget to make these drones in vast quantities, so Russian troops could find safer, less well-guarded pathways behind enemy lines.

Now, a single Ukrainian company, Skyfall, can produce 100,000 bombers per year.

Other firms also produce tens of thousands of drones of their own, giving Ukraine a constant and steady supply line of explosive firepower to deploy at the Russian ranks.

What’s more, these firms are constantly looking for ways to fine-tune their designs to stay one step ahead of any counter measures the Kremlin might come up with.

When the Russians started using electronic warfare EW technology to jam GPSG guided bomber drones, for example, Skyfall added unjammable inertial and terrain matching navigation systems, effectively making their drones utterly immune to EW attacks.

Similarly, when Russian forces began using their own compact air-to-air FPV drones to take out the bombers, Skyfall fitted its units with a new defensive flash.

Thanks to that, if any enemy interceptor drone gets too close, the flash is triggered.

This blinds the enemy drone’s camera, forcing its operator to fly blind and making them much more likely to miss their target and send their own drone crashing to the ground instead.

This can even work at night as some of Ukraine’s bombers have been equipped with special infrared projectors that can nullify any infrared cameras the Russians might use to detect and intercept them during nighttime operations.

And the improvements don’t stop there.

Some bomber variants are now being fitted with Starlink communication technology to increase their range further than before.

This does come at a cost of a slightly smaller payload, but it means that Ukraine will soon be able to start striking targets deeper into Russian territory.

opening up new opportunities for devastating attacks.

The importance of all of this cannot be overstated.

As the war has progressed, drones have become increasingly important on both sides.

The Russian military has invested heavily in autonomous long-range loitering munitions drones, buying up shads from Iran, and setting up new drone production plants on its territory to churn out thousands of units every single month.

It regularly uses these drones for mass attacks on Ukrainian territory, targeting towns, cities, and often civilian infrastructure like hospitals, power stations, and transport hubs.

In contested frontline territories, too, Russia and Ukraine regularly exchange FPV assaults with both sides almost equally matched in this particular aspect of warfare.

In fact, in some areas, Russia’s FPVs are even more numerous and destructive than Ukraine’s.

Fortunately, when it comes to bomber drones, Ukraine has an enormous edge over its enemy.

In fact, it’s light years ahead.

Russia has dedicated almost all of its time and resources to kamicazi drones.

But Ukraine has dared to diversify, and it’s reaping the rewards.

It now has some of the strongest, deadliest, and hardest to kill drones in the world.

And they’re being used to great effect with dozens of reports of successful strikes, not only against enemy troops, but higher value assets as well.

In late February of 2026, for example, pilots of the Ukrainian Military Law Enforcement Service reported a successful strike on a Russian S300 anti-aircraft missile system, as well as a Blackey electronic warfare unit.

A fixedwing bomber drone crew located and struck the S300, which is one of the most expensive air defense assets currently in use among Russian forces.

with a single S300 missile worth around $2 million and the full complex valued at approximately $100 million.

Recent months have also seen reports and videos of Ukraine’s bombers striking the lines of Russian bunkers in Carke to infantry trucks near Constantinoa.

Video evidence also shows them eliminating a tank that the Russians had tried to conceal, blowing up reinforced buildings and damaging expensive military equipment in Kursk.

And when they’re not taking up these larger assets, the bombers are either wounding, killing, or even forcing Russian soldiers to wave the white flag of surrender in a desperate bid to stay alive.

At a time when the Kremlin’s commanders are increasingly relying on infantry assaults to gain ground in key locations along the front lines, the bombers are arguably the most important elements in Ukraine’s defensive arsenal.

Without much or any armor at all to protect them, those Russian soldiers are entirely exposed and utterly at the mercy of Ukrainian drone operators who can simply position their UAVs overhead and let loose a powerful payload of destruction.

This is leading to a lot of casualties for the Kremlin to cope with.

And while Russia has in the past been able to counteract its losses by recruiting new troops, that’s all starting to change.

The latest data shows that Russia is at last losing more soldiers than it can recruit.

Ukraine’s own commander-in-chief, General Alexander Cerski, reported that the Kremlin lost around 12,000 more soldiers than it managed to enlist in 2025, and its losses are only going to get worse from here.

Kev’s forces have been consistently causing a minimum of 1,000 casualties per day while defending their territories.

That adds up to an average of around 30,000 a month.

And Ukraine is eager to push it even higher, setting itself a target of around 50,000 Russian casualties per month.

If it can even get close to that, it will put Russia in a perilous position.

With fewer and fewer able-bodied Russians willing to sign up for Vladimir Putin’s suicidal special military operation, the Kremlin is going to see its army shrink and weaken with every passing week.

That means fewer troops on the front lines, smaller squads, less impactful assaults, and even an easier job for Ukraine’s bomber drone crews who can pick off the struggling Russian soldiers with ease.

In the long term, these drones won’t just help Ukraine defend its territory, but also recapture that which it’s lost.

We’re already seeing the signs of that in Crimea, where Ukrainian forces are taking their first big step towards a complete liberation of the region that’s been under Russian control for over a decade.

Russia has been cut off from Starlink and Ukraine now has an edge on the battlefield.

Ukraine is using that edge.

Counterattacks are being launched and Ukraine is taking back territory.

But this isn’t Ukraine’s real strategy.

What we’re seeing now is a change in Ukraine’s tactics.

It’s going to make 715,000 Russians pay for what they’ve done in the country.

This isn’t just about retaking territory.

It’s about strengthening defenses to the point where Russia will lose tens of thousands more soldiers trying to break Ukraine.

Right now, Ukraine is counterattacking against Russian forces in several regions.

These include the neighboring oblasts of Zaparisia and the Nepo Petrovsk, both of which are in Ukraine’s southeast.

To the untrained observer, this looks like an obvious attempt by Ukraine to roll back some of the gains that Russia made in 2025 and potentially set up for a larger counteroffensive that could push deeper into the southeast.

A breakthrough of the Russian defenses perhaps, and one that could lead to the liberation of a large portion of Ukraine that Russia has illegally occupied for much of the war.

After all, Russia has lost access to Starlink.

Now is the perfect time for Ukraine to counterattack, and that is what Ukraine is doing, only not for the reasons you might expect.

We’ll explain what Ukraine’s real goal is in a few minutes.

Before that, let’s rewind to late January, and a Russian attack that has caused an enormous change on the battlefield.

On January 27th, The Guardian reported that Russian strike drones had hit a passenger train in northeastern Ukraine.

This was no strike against a military target.

It was a terroristic attack that left five people dead in the Khiv region.

In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be considered in exactly the same way, purely as terrorism.

There is not and cannot be any military purpose in this.

Ukraine’s president, Vladimir Zalinski, justifiably raged in the aftermath of the strike.

The world took notice of the latest Russian atrocity, with one man in particular deciding it was finally time to take action.

Following Russia’s brutal assault on the Ukrainian civilians, Elon Musk instructed SpaceX to shut down Russia’s access to the Starling satellites that Putin’s forces had likely used to attack the train.

It appears that Ukraine’s Starling terminals were added to the white list, ensuring that they could be used as normal.

Russia, on the other hand, either went on a blacklist or are now being highlighted as illicit terminals when Russia attempts to use them.

This single move caused chaos in Russia’s ranks.

As David Hamling, writing for Forbes on February 6th explains, “The effects on the Russians has been catastrophic with some units reporting 90% loss of internet communications.

There have reportedly been a rash of friendly fire incidents as the Russians struggle to tell friend from foe.

Command and control of Russian forces has shut down in many areas of Ukraine as the Starlink terminals that forces once relied on have become useless.

Russian soldiers are shooting each other, getting lost in the wilderness of Ukraine, and frankly falling apart across the front lines.

The Starlink shutdown set the stage for what Ukraine is doing now.

As United 24 media reported on February 11th, the Starlink cutoff has left Russia’s troops vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks.

Any alternative that Russia attempts to deploy is undercooked and nowhere near effective enough to overcome the loss of Starlink.

And even Russian military bloggers are claiming that losing access to Starink has undermined Russian frontline positions by making communications and battlefield management almost impossible.

Ukraine is taking advantage of that with a push forward into some of the most vulnerable Russian positions.

David Axe reports in a February 11th article for Euromidan Press.

Ukraine has amassed what Axe calls a powerful force of Ukrainian assault troops.

Those soldiers are being supported by mechanized assets, including US-made tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, which Ukraine is using alongside Swedish armored personnel carriers.

With this armor backing them, Ukraine’s assault troops are sweeping through some of the occupied territories in the southeast of the country.

In particular, Ukraine’s assault forces are focusing on the no man’s land that exists in the Denipo Petrovsk and Zaparisia regions.

Their goal is to take out the small numbers of Russian infiltrators that have managed to enter these areas, transforming what become gray zones in the war into territory that Ukraine fully controls.

Stick with us as we’re going to dig deeper into these goals a little later.

We’ve already seen Ukraine make some substantial gains in Zaparisia over the last week or so.

On February 11th, the New Voice of Ukraine reported that Ukrainian forces have managed to clear Russian infiltrators from the village of Kazixa, which is in the Zaparija blast.

Soldiers conducting search and strike operations in the area had been successful, the outlet said, and the settlement was now under Ukraine’s control.

This was the capper to a multi-day campaign that has resulted in Ukraine retaking several villages in the Zaparisia region, including the settlements of Tonavata and Predn.

All of these villages were liberated between February 8th and 11th.

Once again showcasing just how damaging the loss of Starlink has been for Russia’s force.

With nowhere to communicate with their command centers, the Russian soldiers who are already being sent into the kill zones that Ukraine has created with its drones are now lost, isolated.

They have nowhere to go and no way of knowing if reinforcements are coming.

Obviously panicked by this situation, all the infiltrators can do is haul up and hope that their comrades arrive before Ukraine finds them.

Ukraine has taken the Starlink opportunity to reclaim some of its territory to the southeast, and it’s achieving several immediate goals as it does so.

The first of these goals, as we’ve already touched upon, is ridding the southeast regions of the infiltrators that have been causing so many problems since 2025.

Russia has been trying to tweak its tactics for months after losing thousands of its tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine.

The massive mechanized assaults seen in the early years of the war have largely given way to an infiltration strategy that in some cases has even seen Russian soldiers sneak into Ukrainian territory only to disguise themselves as Ukrainian civilians.

This tactic is called perod, crime under international humanitarian law.

It allows soldiers to carry out ambushes and causes confusion between combatants and non-combatants that can lead to tragedy as civilians face a higher risk of being targeted.

That alone is more than enough reason for Ukraine to want to take out the infiltrators.

And when combined with how Russia has experienced some success with this strategy, at least in the sense of sneaking soldiers into Ukrainian territory and then falsely claiming the territory is fully occupied, Ukraine has an obvious incentive to use the weakening of the Russian military due to the Starink shutdown to handle the infiltrator issue.

That’s precisely what it’s been doing.

Though the completion of this goal is the setup to something other than further pushes into occupied territory.

As axe reports, Russian troops led by the country’s 127th motorized rifle division had been making a slow and steady advance across the Denipovskin’s Aparia axis before the onset of winter slowed them down.

As part of this advance, Russia had even managed to capture the city of July, which is a Ukrainian logistical node, after forcing a retreat of Ukraine’s forces in late December.

With Russia now holding positions that run for about 30 km or 18.

6 mi from the north of Pulipola to the Daetsk based city of Brosk, his forces have been using infiltration tactics.

There is now a gray zone which is another term for no man’s land.

Roughly runs parallel to the higher river in Ukraine’s southeast that Russia was filling with infiltrators like those we mentioned earlier.

Carrying limited supplies and trying to move as quickly as they can to avoid Ukraine’s drones.

These infiltrators had been using Starlink terminal to help them navigate within the gray zone, wreaking havoc for Ukraine’s defenses by stretching them out as they did.

Now Starlink has disappeared for those infiltrators.

They’re stranded in the gray zone and they’re falling soldier by soldier to Ukraine’s assault forces.

At the cost of at least one Australian donated M1 A1 Abrams tank and one ex Swedish PBV302 armored personnel carrier, the assault troops quickly ejected Russian infiltrators from five settlements, including a few on the far side of the high chure, Axe points out.

In other words, the gray zones aren’t gray anymore.

They belong to Ukraine.

And that’s what will lead into the new strategy that’s going to churn through the 715,000 soldiers that Russia now has inside Ukraine.

We’re about to get into what the new strategy entails.

But before we do, this is the military show and we deliver the complete picture, not just the headlines.

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So what is this new strategy? Stabilizing Ukraine’s southeast rather than trying to push for more gains.

One of Ukraine’s biggest problems in the southeastern territories is that fortifications there were relatively weak when Russia invaded, and they haven’t gotten much better since.

Back in May 2024, we saw the impact of these weak fortifications in the wake of the fall of Abdivka, which is in the Papovsk region.

As AP News reported, at the time, Ukraine soldiers had bemoaned the lack of defensive lines in the rear behind that city, which is likely a large reason why Russia claiming Avdka allowed it to so swiftly transition into its assaults on the city of Povsk.

Batar, who is a unit commander who spoke to AP News, outlined the problem succinctly.

It’s necessary to increase the pace of building fortifications so that when we retreat, we will retreat to a prepared position.

Bachar told the outlet adding these fortifications are not enough.

The situation was bad enough that professor of political science at the National University of Kiev Mallaya Academy Taras Kuzio wrote an entire piece for the new voice of Ukraine in April 2025 where he asked the question of who was to blame for Ukraine’s loss of the southeast.

Kuzio laid at least some of the blame for the fall of Ukraine’s southeast on Ukraine itself, writing, “Zilinsky is to blame for ignoring the infiltration of Russian agents into the SBU, appointing Ivan Bakenov, with no experience on intelligence operations as head of the SBU and being naive about Vladimir Putin, especially in 2019 and Russian imperialism.

” Zalinsky did not prepare adequate defenses on the Kon Crimea line, failing, for example, to order the installation of minefields, Kusio claims.

In other words, Ukraine hadn’t done enough to prepare for what Putin had basically told the country was coming following the annexation of Crimea and parts of the Donbass region in 2014.

Sadly, Ukraine paid the price for the loss of substantial amounts of territory in the south and southeast.

That brings us nicely back to the real goal behind the counter offensives that we’re now seeing Ukraine conduct against Russia in the southeast.

These offensives aren’t about reclaiming large amounts of territory.

Frankly, Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower to reverse the extensive gains that Putin’s forces made during the early stages of the invasion.

But what Ukraine does have is enough soldiers to push the Russian infiltrators out of the gray zones in Zaparisia and Denra Petrovsk.

That’s precisely what it’s doing.

And it’s doing it so that it can transform those gray zones into fortified Ukrainian territory through which Russia will have to pour untold numbers of soldiers if they’re to have any chance of advancing again.

This is brilliant by Ukraine.

Its strategy is to a trip via its defense rather than to risk its soldiers as they try to make massive gains.

French military analyst Clemore Mulan explained what he was seeing in Ukraine’s southeast at an expost.

Some are talking of US Panifeka as an objective which could be the area is very difficult for Russia to move.

We saw the impact maps but I do not think that will happen.

Milan suggested adding the priority is to secure higher river and Povsk approach.

This will buy time for further fortification improvements in the area.

And that is Ukraine’s ultimate strategy to write the wrongs of its faltering southeastern defenses by transforming what were gray zones when Russia had access to Starlink into outright kill zones that will destroy Russian soldiers who attempt to infiltrate or storm through them.

It may not be what many expect after seeing what Ukraine has been doing, but it’s a strategy that will lead to the deaths of an enormous number of Russian soldiers.

And this is why.

According to the Institute for the Study of War or ISW, the Kremlin is building up for a renewed summer offensive that will mirror the one that we saw in 2025, that offensive failed to take Macrok, which is the main strategic goal.

So, we can presume that this new offensive will involve Russia attempting to occupy that city before conducting a deeper push into Donetsk.

Beyond signaling that Putin has no intention of ending the war he started despite his claims otherwise.

This new summer offensive will focus on the Slavansk and Oriv Zaparisia directions right in the direction of the gray zones that Ukraine has retaken and is now working on fortifying if Milan is to be believed.

However, there is already a problem forming with this strategy.

As the ISW explains, the Russian military command is reportedly planning to deploy its likely limited strategic reserves to a planned summer 2026 offensive in southern and/or eastern Ukraine.

Key word to look for here is limited.

What Russia is planning to do is launch a new offensive despite the fact that its reserves are all but gone, and those that Russia is going to be sending into Ukraine during this offensive are likely going to be the bottom of the barrel when it comes to soldiers.

As United 24 media reported on February 10th, the average Russian soldier is now spending as little as 10 days in training or they’re pushed to the front lines to become cannon foder Putin’s war.

In short, Russia is out of experienced or capable soldiers simply sending meat, much of which is already being ground up as it crashes against Ukraine’s defenses in places like Macrovsk.

It’s here where Ukraine’s new fortification strategy comes into play.

Ukraine could attack these weak forces and it would likely make some gains.

But again, there are 715,000 Russians in Ukraine right now.

Even with the most skilled soldiers, Ukraine faces a significant manpower disadvantage that would result in heavy casualties on both sides if it launched a full-blown counter offensive.

Ukraine wants the casualties to be on one side only.

Creating new fortifications after liberating key pieces of territory in the southeast of the country is the way to do it.

Ukraine has already been working toward what we’re seeing now.

According to the Defense Post in a January 29th article, the Ukrainian Association of Developers has already built about 2 km or around 1.

2 mi of defensive infrastructure along the eastern front, which links 12 underground positions with communication routes, all with the goal of strengthening Ukraine’s defenses.

While it’s unknown if something similar will be built in the gray zones that Ukraine controls, we’re almost certain to see trenches being dug, dragon’s teeth being placed, mines being laid, barbed wire strewn all over, and of course, the inevitable FPV drones that will turn the region into a kill zone.

These are enhanced fortifications, the likes of which hadn’t existed before.

2025 has taught Ukraine that it can inflict massive losses on Russia using these kinds of defenses.

The Atlantic Council notes this, stating, “There has been a pretty important change in Ukraine’s defensive approach we started to see in 2025.

Ukraine is building nodes of small-cale fortification it’s using to funnel Russian soldiers into pre-desated kill pockets where the soldiers are battered with drones and artillery.

By creating choke points for Russian troops, Ukraine aims to maximize Kremling casualties and capitalize on its inbuilt advantages as the defending party in a war of attrition.

It seems likely that this is what Ukraine plans to create in the Zaparisia and Denipropovsk regions and the country knows this approach will be effective.

2025 was a terrible year to be a Russian soldier.

For much of the year, Putin’s only strategy seemed to be to throw soldiers at Ukraine’s defenses in the hope that those defenses would break.

We’ve seen how that’s played out in Brosk as Russia is more than half a year overdue in taking that city based on what Putin wanted.

By the end of the year, Russia had absorbed an estimated 415,000 battlefield casualties, according to the National Interest, all in return for a tiny portion of Ukraine’s territory.

This is the impact that Ukraine’s fortifications have.

The beginning of 2026 hasn’t been any better for Russia.

According to the Ukrainian military’s commander-in-chief, Alexander Syski, Russia lost 31,700 soldiers in January, which is about 9,000 more than the country was able to recruit.

Ukraine has also set itself the target of increasing these numbers to 50,000 per month, which will lead to its shredding through the 715,000 soldiers that Russia has in Ukraine.

What we’re now seeing in Zaparisia and Den Petrovsk is Ukraine building on a strategy that it knows will work.

Russia has no plan B.

It barely has a plan A.

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