Increase in Russian drone strikes tests Ukrainian defenses and devastates families

Maria Troyanivska had returned home early the night a Russian drone struck her bedroom.

“He flew through the window, straight into her room,” her mother Viktoria told the BBC. After the explosion, she and her husband Volodymyr ran out of the next room and discovered that their daughter’s room was on fire.

“We tried to put it out, but everything was burning so strongly,” she says through tears. “It was impossible to breathe – we had to leave.”

Russia’s Shahed drone killed the 14-year-old in her bed last month in her apartment in a Kiev suburb.

“She died immediately and then burned,” her mother said. “We had to bury her in a closed coffin. She had no chance of surviving.”

Russia is massively increasing drone attacks on Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, more than 2,000 were launched in October – a record number in this war.

Same report says Russia fired 1,410 drones in September, and 818 in August – compared to around 1,100 in the entire three-month period before.

It is part of a broader revival of Russia’s armed forces. The invaders advance along the front lines. North Korean troops have joined the war on Moscow’s side. And with the election of Donald Trump to a second term as US president, Ukraine’s depleted and war-weary armed forces face uncertain support from their largest military donor.

The majority of Russian drones raining down on Ukraine are Iranian-designed Shaheds: propeller-driven, with a distinctive wing shape and a deadly warhead packed into the nose cone.

Russia has also started launching fake drones, without explosives, to confuse Ukrainian air defense units and force them to waste ammunition.

Compared to rockets, they are much cheaper to build, easier to fire and designed to undermine morale.

Every night, Ukrainians go to sleep with notifications coming on their phones, as incoming drones criss-cross the country and sound sirens.

And every morning they wake up to news of yet another strike. Since early November, drones have hit Kiev, Kharkiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhiav.

On Sunday, Russia launched 145 drones at UkraineAccording to President Volodymyr Zelensky – a record number for a single day since the start of the large-scale invasion.

Kiev said it had managed to shoot down 62 drones that day, and that a further 67 drones had been “lost” – meaning they had either been downed by electronic warfare or disappeared from radar screens.

Ukrainian air defenses are struggling to cope with the rising numbers.

‘So far we have intercepted them. I hope we will continue to intercept them,” Sergeant Mychailo Shamanov, a spokesman for the military administration of the city of Kiev, told the BBC.

While he says Russia is trying to hit military installations, the “overall goal is to terrorize civilians.”

They know the Russians will continue to increase these attacks, he said. That’s why his government continually asks for more air defense from Western allies.

It is also why Ukraine is nervously waiting to see how US President-elect Trump will approach the war when he returns to power.

“Even if the air defense works well, drone or missile debris falls on the city. It causes fire, damage and unfortunately sometimes also casualties,” he explains.

“Every night it’s a lottery – where it hits, where it gets shot, where it falls and what happens.”

Vitaliy and his men have no permanent post; their weapons for shooting the Shaheds are carried on the back of a flatbed truck, allowing them to maneuver quickly.

“We are trying to monitor, move, overrun and destroy the drone,” he said.

It’s clear that the work is taking its toll.

“Six months ago that was fifty drones per month. Now the number has increased to 100 drones every night,” he said.

Their days are also getting longer. When the Russians mainly used missiles to bomb Ukraine, the unit commander said, the air warnings would last about six hours. “Now it’s about 12 or 13 o’clock,” he said.

Vitaliy stands confidently in front of his men and declares that they can handle anything the Russians can shoot at them if they get weapons from Western allies. “Our guys could even handle 250 drones (in one night),” he said.

But air defense can only do so much. The Ukrainians will continue to suffer until Russia stops its invasion and air attacks on cities.

Viktoria says their lives are now divided into before and after their daughter’s death. They are staying with a friend after the destruction of their flat; she said they sleep in the hallway at night to shelter from the constant drone attacks.

“Of course it’s tiring,” she said. “But it seems to me that it makes people even more angry, irritated and indignant. Because people, especially lately, really can’t understand the attacks that are hitting peaceful homes.”

“I don’t understand at all why this war started and for what,” Maria’s father, Volodymyr, told the BBC. “What’s the point? Not from an economic perspective, nor human, territorial – people just die.”

“It’s just some ambitions of sick people.”

Additional reporting by Hanna Chornous and Anastasiia Levchenko