Russia and Ukraine trade more long-range drone attacks that are a hallmark of their war

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces launched 363 Shahed and decoy drones as well as eight missiles at Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian air force said Friday, claiming that air defenses stopped all but four of the drones and downed six cruise missiles.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said 39 Ukrainian drones were downed in several regions overnight, including 19 over the Rostov region and 13 over the Volgograd region. Both regions lie east of Ukraine.

Long-range drone strikes have been a hallmark of the war, now in its fourth year. The race by both sides to develop increasingly sophisticated and deadlier drones has turned the war into a testing ground for new weaponry.

The Ukrainian air force said that 359 incoming drones were either intercepted or electronically jammed.

Ukraine is employing new countermeasures against Russia’s escalation of combined missile and drone attacks, officials say. Instead of relying on ground-based mobile teams to shoot down Shaheds, Ukraine is deploying interceptor drones it has developed.

The Ukrainian attack forced three Russian airports to briefly suspend flights, officials said. The authorities also briefly closed the Crimean Bridge overnight as drones targeted Crimea.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine reported any major damage or casualties in the attacks.

Russia manufactures Shahed drones based on an original Iranian model, churning out thousands of them at a plant in the Tatarstan region. It has upgraded the Shaheds with its own innovations, including bigger warheads.

They are known as suicide drones because they nosedive into targets and explode on impact, like a missile. The incessant buzzing of the propeller-driven Shahed drones is unnerving for anyone under its flight path because no one on the ground knows exactly when or where the weapon will hit.

Being outgunned and outnumbered in the war against its bigger neighbor, Ukraine also has developed its own cutting-edge drone technology, including long-range sea drones, and has trained thousands of drone pilots.

Smaller, short-range drones are used by both sides on the battlefield and in areas close to the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.

Those drones, fitted with onboard cameras that give their operators a real-time view of possible targets, have also struck civilian areas.

The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a report published Thursday that short-range drone attacks killed at least 395 civilians and injured 2,635 between the start of the war and last April. Almost 90% of the attacks were by the Russian armed forces, it reported.

The strikes not only spread fear among civilians but also severely disrupt daily life by restricting movement and limiting access to food and medical services, the report said.