At least four out of every five successful Ukrainian strikes against Russia’s forces are being carried out by drones, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday.
The new figure represents one of the highest official estimates of the involvement of drones in Ukraine’s battlefield operations. In the spring of 2025, Ukrainian officials had said that roughly 70% of Russian casualties were inflicted by drones.
Speaking at an awards event for Ukrainian drone units, Zelenskyy said that the “overwhelming majority” of these drones were manufactured locally.
In a statement, Zelenskyy’s office said that in 2025, Ukrainian troops had struck nearly 820,000 targets with drones.
“Each of these strikes is recorded, which helps not only with hit verification but also with the operation of the bonus-based system for assessing military performance,” the statement said, referring to a new system that rewards drone squads for video-recording their battlefield engagements.
For every confirmed kill, drone units are assigned points that can be used to procure equipment.
Zelenskyy said that infantry and artillery were still important in the war, but “everything is becoming extremely dependent” on how quickly Kyiv can adapt and build new technologies.
“Our bonus-based electronic points system is working to scale up the results of our defense. In December, our units achieved a result of 35,000 neutralized occupiers,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Ukrainian units that regularly report their battlefield performance have also suggested similar tallies for December.
Maj. Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said on Sunday that his units were responsible for a third of Ukraine’s battlefield hits with drones, and had wounded or killed a daily average of 388 Russian soldiers in December.
That roughly translates to 34,900 casualties for the month.
Mykhailo Fedorov, who is now Ukraine’s defense minister, previously said that he estimated up to 90% of battlefield kills in August could be attributed to drones. He was serving as minister for digital transformation at the time.
Ukraine aimed last year to manufacture roughly 2.5 million first-person-view drones, though some local estimates have also said it could target a capacity of up to 4.5 million. Officials have not said how many such drones were actually produced in 2025.
Kyiv has sought to aggressively expand and export its local drone manufacturing sector, and hopes to wean itself and the international market off Chinese products and parts.
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