(ODESA, ODESA OBLAST) – Russia has deployed a new tactic in its war on Ukraine: jet powered drones that are overwhelming Ukrainian air defences and striking cities with alarming frequency.
The shift began as Moscow realised Ukraine had become increasingly effective at intercepting its Shahed drones. Instead of firing expensive missiles or large clusters of propeller driven drones, Russian forces now saturate the skies with one or two jet powered drones every 15 to 20 minutes. The new drones are far faster and much harder to shoot down. In Kyiv, something is hitting something every 15 minutes, with smoke stacks rising across the city.
The tactic exploits a critical vulnerability: Ukraine’s air defence systems have been depleted. Jet powered drones travel at roughly three times the speed of their predecessors, meaning interceptor systems must be three times faster. That requires better cameras, optics, radio signals and computing systems, all of which are significantly more expensive to develop and produce. Offensive drone technology is far simpler than defensive systems designed to chase a moving target at high speed.
The consequences are being felt across the country. Reporter Caolan Robertson was in Odesa when a Russian cruise missile crashed directly into the building where he was sleeping. The missile tore through the upper floors, killing two people. The doors and windows were blown open, the hallway filled with smoke. Hours earlier, he had been filming with an air defence brigade. The irony was not lost on him: he had come to Odesa to talk about air defence.
That brigade, one of Ukraine’s best, shot down over 270 drones in August. But the interceptors they rely on, known as Stings, were the cutting edge of drone defence until a few months ago. They are propeller based systems, and against jet powered drones, speed wins. During one air alert, jet powered drones passed directly overhead. They were too fast, too high, and the Stings could not touch them. The soldiers stood and listened as the drones disappeared into the darkness.
The feeling of helplessness is widespread. Roughly 50 percent of the time, soldiers sit in their vans watching screens as another drone passes over with nothing to take it down. The psychological blanket of air defence that once covered the country has lifted. It now feels as though almost everything is getting through.
Further down the coast, the 639th Separate Anti-Aircraft Machine Gun Battalion moves out when alarms sound, attempting to intercept drones launched from occupied Crimea before they reach Odesa and the surrounding region. They use a Browning M2, a 50 calibre heavy machine gun whose design is almost a century old, a weapon from the Second World War now mounted on the back of a truck trying to shoot down autonomous Russian attack drones. Hitting one is incredibly difficult: they must find a tiny aircraft, track it, wait for the moment to fire, and hit it before it disappears. Meanwhile, people swim and families lie on the beach just behind them, as soldiers stare across the same sea waiting for the next drone to appear.
The unit keeps a very low profile, with almost no interviews and no social media presence. For these gunners, every drone they stop is one that does not reach someone’s house, someone’s family, someone sleeping a kilometre inland.
That night, the reporter checked into a hotel further down the coast, somewhere he thought might be safer than the apartment the missile had hit. It was not. Almost all night, the same air defence units opened fire. The corridor shook. Drones passed overhead. When the sun came up, a group of women unrolled their yoga mats on the shore. Every time something flew overhead, they rolled them back up, went inside, waited, and came straight back out again. It was, he said, the best description of Odesa in 2026 he could imagine: ordinary life just keeps starting again.
Russia is intensifying these attacks because it senses a race against time. Ukraine is racing to innovate, to replace humans on the front line with technology, to save lives, to detect and intercept the missiles coming into the country every day. Russia is racing to scale up drone and missile production and to move it as far from the front lines as possible, out of reach of Ukraine’s long range strikes. Both are happening simultaneously. Ukraine feels more vulnerable than it ever has before.
The human cost on the Russian side continues to mount. Russia lost approximately 45,000 soldiers last month, a record again and again. Each month, the losses grow. So Russia does what it always does when it gets desperate: it attacks Ukraine from the skies. The train attacked in recent days leaving Kyiv for Warsaw was full of people visiting the YES conference, including diplomats, dignitaries and politicians who had to run from the train with smoke billowing behind. Russia is doing this openly, with no plausible deniability and no fear of comeback.
Sean Pinner, a friend of the reporter, said the style of attacks suggests Russia is becoming more of a terrorist state. “They don’t seem to be doing this at night anymore,” he said. “There’s no plausible deniability anymore. They’re just doing it out in the open because there’s no comeback from it.” He noted that Russia has reverse engineered much of its technology and is now mass producing it. “Eventually I think we’ll find a way to combat these jet drones,” he added. “But this war is escalating out into the heartlands of Russia and pushing to the borders and into Europe. I can’t see any signs for peace. It’s just getting worse.”
Footage and reporting from Odesa and the surrounding region were released by the YouTube channel of Caolan Robertson, with additional interviews conducted with the 639th Separate Anti-Aircraft Machine Gun Battalion.
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