Sunday marked another near-record missile and drone attack on Kyiv and two other major cities in Ukraine — but get ready for “record-breaking” to become the new normal as Russia radically ramps up drone production.
And so is Ukraine.
Before we get to all that, a quick look at last night’s fireworks.
“The primary targets of last night’s massive Russian air strikes on Ukraine were Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Kharkiv,” OSINT Intuit reported at zero-dark-thirty this morning. “AFU air defense forces report that 426 strike or decoy drones and 24 missiles were used in the attack of which the majority were shot down.”
Kyiv isn’t just sitting there and taking it, however. Reuters reported this morning that waves of “drone attacks on Russia sowed chaos at major airports serving Moscow on Monday, with thousands of passengers waiting in lines or sleeping on the floor after flights were cancelled or delayed.”
Russian sources claim 117 drones shot down overnight, including 30 over the Moscow region.
Both countries’ air defenses are strained by the near-nightly attacks, according to some sources, but Moscow aims to overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses with ever-larger drone swarms.
According to an ISW summary, German General Christian Freuding — who coordinates his country’s military aid to Ukraine — said in a podcast this weekend, “that Russia continues to expand its production of Shahed-type drones in order to launch even larger long-range drone strike packages that include up to 2,000 drones in a single night.”
That wouldn’t be 2,000 drones every night, mind you — far from it. But even semi-regular attacks of that size would be more than double the number of drones used in Russia’s record-breaking raid earlier this month.
Again, Ukraine isn’t just sitting there and taking it.
Ukraine’s new government last week approved a measure “to expand domestic arms production to meet half the country’s weapons needs within six months,” according to U.S. News & World Report. That would be up from about 40% today — and you can bet next month’s mortgage payment that they’re going all-in on drone production, too.
Already, Kyiv has developed various anti-drone drones — “Begun, the Drone Wars have” — capable of intercepting the Iranian-designed Shahed drones Moscow now produces in such numbers.
If it weren’t for all the human death and destruction, particularly in Ukraine’s major cities, you could almost laugh at the escalating drone-on-drone warfare. That’s because, unless one side figures out how to use drones to shut down or seriously impede the other side’s drone production, don’t expect Russia or Ukraine to devise some war-winning blow this way.
I’m reminded a bit of the “War of the Cities” during the Iran-Iraq War. With both sides hunkered down in a bloody stalemate on the fighting front, they resorted to hitting each other’s capital cities with missiles and air attacks. The War of the Cities was militarily ineffective, and doesn’t seem to have affected morale much on either side — but did rouse world opinion enough to result in UN Resolution 598 and a ceasefire in August 1988.
Like 1988, the world may again need a diplomatic off-ramp. Enter Donald Trump.
Trump is working on a ceasefire. Maybe he’ll even get one. It would sure beat the hell out of escalating deadly absurdities.
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