Lt Col Ray, a Ukrainian commander with the 414th aviation brigade, said Ukraine’s drone war is now reaching Russian-occupied Crimea and, in 2026, Moscow and St Petersburg, as the country’s military machine pushes deeper into the sky and farther from the front. At a launch site in the Ukrainian countryside, he watched a drone roar into a mauve sky after taking off from a field of tall yellow sunflowers and declared: “We are making history here. This is where democracy beats totalitarianism. It’s like George Orwell. But this time Big Brother loses.”
The launch took place as sparrows cheeped at sunset. Ray’s unit was described as an elite long-and-medium-range strike drone unit, and the scene had the stripped-down efficiency of modern war: a moped-like growl, a drone jerking upwards at a 45-degree angle, orange flames fizzing, then black smoke and a whiff of gunpowder as it headed for Crimea. The peninsula was described in the article as a scenic Ukrainian peninsula of beaches and white chalk mountains stolen by Russia in 2014 and militarised thereafter. The language of liberation sits uneasily beside the machinery of destruction. Same sky, different flags.
Two more long-range drones followed. They carried 50-100kg of explosives each and flew into the twilight above a darkening steppe landscape. The soldiers packed briskly, wound up white cables and left within 10 minutes, disappearing down a tree-lined and potholed track. Far away from the frontline, other crews were crisscrossing Ukraine and releasing drones according to a precise evening schedule, with operators sitting in front of computer screens nudging them towards enemy targets. The model can fly more than 2,500km, far enough to pummel anywhere in European Russia and much of Siberia.
The War Machine Moves by Schedule
After four hours, at about 1am, the first drone reached the holiday resort of Alushta on the southern coast of occupied Crimea. It weaved between grey apartment blocks and crashed into a 110kV electricity substation, where flames erupted and lit up the city’s inky blackness. The strikes on 21 July were part of what Ukraine has nicknamed the Crimean “switch off”, a campaign to disconnect the region from its power and logistics networks. That same night, unmanned drones hit 13 electricity nodes. Several were in the Russian-controlled parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces, which the Kremlin says it has annexed.
Since 2022, Russia has carried out nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and towns, sending Iranian-designed shaheeds as well as ballistic and hypersonic missiles. After Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, those swarms grew, raining down chaotically and killing families in their apartments and other civilians in what the article described as a calculated campaign of terror. Ukraine, once a recipient of western assistance, has responded by developing its own military manufacturing base and, after rapid growth, has become the world’s leading unmanned systems power. The drones hurled last week at Crimea were built in Kyiv by a defence technology startup, and the firm’s representatives take part in operations.
Ray’s battalion, named after Kairos, the ancient Greek god of opportunity, luck and the fleeting moment, has carried out hundreds of deep strikes against Russia. Its targets have included oil refineries, warehouses and munitions depots, as well as ports and harbours and routes used for army logistics such as roads and railways. In 2026, Ukrainian drones have struck Moscow and Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, embarrassing Russia’s president and bringing the war home to ordinary citizens who had previously ignored it. Ray said: “I think Putin is afraid. One of the justifications he gave for his war was to stop Ukraine from [potentially] bombing Moscow. It’s happening now as a direct consequence of his actions.”
Who Pays for the Sky
Ray said he felt “revenge and justice” every time one of his drones ascended into the moonlit heavens bound for enemy territory. “We didn’t start this war. We have no choice. We are fighting for our independence, for our people, for the memory of those who have died, and for our future. This is a contest between slaves and free people,” he said. The rhetoric is grand. The targets are concrete: substations, refineries, warehouses, ports, roads, railways, and the people who live under them.
Secrecy surrounds Ukraine’s drone operation. An analytics department finds targets. Western partners provide some intelligence, but most of it is open source. Drone crews are given coordinates at the last minute. So far, none of those who take part in launches have been injured or killed, despite attempts by Moscow to identify and blow up lift-off points. One person involved said: “You are making change on a global scale. Trump wakes up and sees the results. At the same time it’s very solitary. You can’t tell anybody about what you do, even your wife, or boast: ‘Today we bombed Moscow.’ Only your commander understands.” They added: “It’s an important job. You feel the biggest satisfaction and a member of an elite.”
Kairos is part of “Magyar’s Birds”, a brigade named after the call sign of its founder, Robert Brovdi, the head of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces. In July, Brovdi launched a campaign to destroy oil tankers and other vessels in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. So far, more than 200 have been hit. The Russians were taken unawares, their boats unable to escape. Since last week, the brigade has been burning warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon, obliterating at least nine of them. Ukraine says the company sells military products. The strikes have crippled small businesses and caused billions of roubles in damage. Brovdi said: “The socio-psychological impact on society is greater than that of an oil refinery.”
Brovdi said Ukrainian long-range drones had “significantly thinned out” Russia’s air defences. “We have already destroyed the majority of them,” he said. “With every air defence unit destroyed, the breach expands.” Three days earlier, air defence units were flattened in the Russian port of Yeysk on the Azov Sea, he added, bringing the number of systems knocked out to 305. He said Russia’s enormous size, once a strategic strength, has turned into a weakness, and that a panicked Kremlin has moved “a certain number” of air defences from the frontline to protect Moscow. Brovdi said he wanted to stop Russia from using Crimea as a “springboard” to fire on Ukraine and to push out the nearly 1 million Russian residents or “colonisers” who settled on the peninsula after Putin’s 2014 takeover.
Crimea now has so little fuel that Russian military groups are sometimes unable to fill up and launch drones. There are also frequent power cuts. One brigade member, call sign Schweik, predicted food shortages would happen soon. “The operation is endless. There will be a cascade effect. We will continue this pressure. They will be thinking about survival instead of assault operations,” he said. Schweik added: “The situation is humiliating for Russia. Crimea is symbolic. It was Putin’s first trophy and the place where the world order was broken. He created a kind of euphoria in Russia society, which in turn gave him permission to go and take more [Ukrainian] territory. Now everyone in the world understands that Russia is really weak.”
Not all Ukrainian drones reach their targets. According to Ray, about a third are brought down over occupied territory. He said losses in the skies above Russia were considerably higher. Even so, Ukraine’s strategy of piling pressure on the Russian economy appears to be working. Brovdi said: “Troops and resources must be exhausted, so that it becomes impossible for them to continue the war.”
Brovdi acknowledged that Russian troops were still advancing in the eastern Donbas region, with battles in the city of Kostiantynivka. “Their gains to date do not justify the price they’re paying for them,” he said. He added: “At this rate, with their intention to seize half of Ukraine, are they planning to fight for 100 years?”
Back in the countryside, Ray’s colleague Panama described the latest launch as a success. “It was 10 out of 10. With us it’s always like this,” he said, adding that he had been working with the current biplane-like model for a year and a half. “To begin with we used foreign drones. Sometimes things went wrong. Now we don’t have problems,” he said. The only challenge, he said, came from mosquitoes that fill the air during summer evenings. “Over time we’ve become friends with them. They don’t annoy me any more. They are also inhabitants of free Ukraine. They can do whatever they want,” Panama said. “But if they irritate us we will launch them at the enemy. They can eat Russians.”