Valentyn Ogirenko/REUTERS
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his country’s interceptor drones struck 150 Russian long-range attack and decoy drones in a single night.
In his regular public address, Zelenskyy said Russia had launched a total of 810 drones in one wave, including over 400 Shahed loitering munitions.
His tally indicates that nearly a fifth of the drone wave was downed that evening by interceptor drones — an emerging low-cost air defense that Ukraine is rushing to produce at scale.
“Of course, not everything is being shot down yet, and we still need to further strengthen our air defenses,” Zelenskyy said in his address.
Interceptor drones, originally made to catch and destroy reconnaissance craft, are high-speed uncrewed aerial systems that must fly fast enough to chase down their target midair and crash into it.
Many of these are first-person-view drones that feed live camera footage to a pilot who must fly the system into its target. With Russia’s growing use of the Shahed, Ukraine is now pivoting its interceptor development to fight loitering munitions.
As with much of Ukraine’s homegrown drone technology, the effort is largely decentralized, driven by a range of local manufacturers. Each produces its own drone, which is sold or donated to Ukrainian air defense troops in coordination with the government.
“This is a top priority,” Zelenskyy said on Sunday. “Russians keep the number of Shaheds in massive strikes at the level of 300 to 400 per strike, and our interceptors must reach a matching level. This is realistic.”
The rest of Ukraine’s air defense system relies on jamming, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and mobile fire groups, which are vehicle crews equipped with mounted machine guns.
But they’ve often been overwhelmed by the sheer number of drones Russia launches in one wave. Moscow has increasingly started accumulating attack drones and ballistic missiles to launch them in greater numbers at the same time.
The Shahed-136, originally of Iranian design, has been a staple of those nightly barrages. The drone is known to fly roughly at a top speed of 115 mph, so an interceptor must usually be faster to catch up to the Shahed after detecting the Russian craft.
The Kremlin also deploys a similar drone, known as the Gerbera, designed to mimic the Shahed in a bid to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses. Kyiv thus hopes interceptors can soon be used as a cheap, reliable way to counter the onslaught. One Shahed is roughly estimated to cost Russia about $35,000 per unit, while many interceptors typically cost between $2,000 and $6,000 each.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his government has been securing financing and contracts for interceptors.
“Developing this interceptor technology, deploying it, training crews, all of this saves lives,” he said.
Ukraine said that the drone attack on Sunday — the one referred to by Zelenskyy — was Russia’s biggest wave so far. Roughly 56 drones made it past Ukrainian air defenses, with at least one impacting Kyiv’s parliamentary headquarters, officials said.
At least four people, including an infant, were killed in the attack, Ukrainian authorities said.
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