KYIV — When I first visited Kyiv in May 2023, Ukraine’s capital experienced what was then one of the largest air attacks of the war: Russia fired 25 missiles and nine drones. I could hear the blasts outside my hotel room as Ukrainian air defenses shot down all the projectiles. Last week, during my third visit to wartime Ukraine, Russia set another shameful record by firing 30 missiles and nearly 1,000 Shahed drones during a 24-hour period (March 23-24).
The radical expansion in the size of air attacks over the past three years is a sign that Russia’s war of aggression shows no sign of abating. But Ukraine, while far smaller than Russia, has kept pace with the aggressor. Although a drone damaged a historic church in the city of Lviv, Ukrainian air defenses last week shot down 95 percent of the Shaheds, in part by using low-cost interceptor drones produced by no other nation.
While Russia was targeting Ukrainian homes, hospitals and churches, Ukraine was dispatching long-range drones to hit Russia’s oil export terminals on the Baltic Sea, more than 600 miles away. These audacious attacks cut Russia’s oil exports by 40 percent, and therefore decreased the oil revenue available to fund Vladimir Putin’s war machine. That may partially offset the windfall Russia will reap from the Iran war, which has led to rising oil prices and a relaxation of U.S. sanctions.
In the meantime, Ukrainian workers have been busy repairing the damage done to energy infrastructure over the winter. Massive Russian missile-and-drone attacks had caused lengthy electrical, water and heating outages while temperatures plunged to 4 degrees below zero. Everyone I spoke with in Kyiv remembered this as the hardest winter ever. But spring is here, and the power is back.
I didn’t experience any blackouts during my week in Ukraine as part of a delegation from the Renew Democracy Initiative, a nonprofit group that has delivered nearly $15 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. (I sit on RDI’s advisory board.) Both of the cities we visited, Kyiv and Kharkiv, remain vibrant and bustling, even though Kharkiv is just 20 miles from the Russian border and has suffered considerable damage.
During our travels, we gained some fascinating insights into how this scrappy country has managed to field what may be the most powerful drone army in the world. President Volodymyr Zelensky says that 30,000 to 35,000 Russian soldiers are being killed every month, which is more than Putin is recruiting, and that 90 percent of the losses are inflicted by drones. In February, Ukraine actually gained more territory than it lost for the first time since 2023, helped by Elon Musk cutting Russian forces off from Starlink access.
The drones holding the barbaric invaders at bay — Ukraine aims to build 7 million of them this year — are made in workshops such as the one we visited in a nondescript structure in Kyiv that could easily pass for an apartment or office building. When you think of a factory, you think of an automated assembly line in a hangar-like building. But drones in Ukraine are built by hand because the designs change every couple of months, based on feedback from soldiers on the front lines. Both sides are constantly innovating in a never-ending struggle for battlefield advantage.
Workers sit on chairs designed for computer gaming and work at white workbenches to assemble the drones. Some of the parts (in particular, flight controllers, motors and fiber-optic cables) come from China, in many cases produced by the same factories churning out parts for Russia’s drones. Other parts are made by Ukrainian subcontractors, and still others are produced in-house on 3D printers.
The product line at this secret factory includes air-defense interceptors that look like rockets out of a Tintin comic book; first-person-view, quadcopter kamikaze drones; and larger drones capable of dropping bombs or supplies. Some of the drones are controlled by fiber-optic lines, unspooling from a housing beneath the chassis, to foil electronic jamming, while others are operated by radio frequency or Starlink internet connections.
Every drone is tested on-site before being packaged and shipped out. If you didn’t know what was in the pallets, you might imagine they are Christmas toys headed for Walmart or Target. But they are, in fact, cutting-edge instruments of war.
A few days later, I saw how the drones are employed during a visit with the 429th Separate Unmanned Systems Brigade, known as the Achilles Brigade. In a farm field outside Kharkiv, soldiers demonstrated how they use a large Vampire aerial drone to either deliver supplies to Ukrainian soldiers or drop bombs on Russian soldiers. They also showed off an Ardal ground robot, a self-propelled wagon on tracks that can deliver supplies to the frontlines and evacuate wounded soldiers.
Maj. Yurii Fedorenko, a 34-year-old former business executive, is the brigade’s charismatic commander. With his beard and wearing a dangling earring in his left ear, he presumably would not pass muster with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a stickler for grooming standards. But Fedorenko was awarded Ukraine’s highest military honor, Hero of Ukraine, Golden Star Order, for his success in eliminating Russian invaders. Under the points system that the Ukrainian army uses to incentivize performance, the Achilles Brigade’s feats will be rewarded with more funding. The brigade reports that it hit nearly 38,000 targets last year. It aims to hit 80,000 this year.
Fedorenko was just one of the many impressive individuals I met on this visit; others include business executives, government officials and civic activists. Their country — blessed with a well-educated populace, rich farmland and copious natural resources — will have a bright future once the war ends.
No one can say when that will be, unfortunately. One senior Ukrainian official told me that Putin may have been close to making a deal before the Iran war broke out. But Zelensky is also taking advantage of the Middle East conflict. He is sending Ukrainian air-defense specialists to the Persian Gulf and concluding agreements with the Gulf states that could lead to a badly needed influx of capital into Ukraine’s world-class drone industry.
Russia is expanding its own drone production, even exporting them to Iran, and it remains a formidable foe. But Ukrainians have a not-so-secret weapon the Russians cannot match: the determination of a democratic nation to stay free.
“After more than four years of war, most people are tired,” Roman Andreyko, the T-shirt clad CEO of media company Lux Media, told us. “We want the war to stop. We want peace. But we are not ready to capitulate.” Thanks to the rapid development of its drone industry, Ukraine is in no danger of needing to.
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