Kyiv Hit for Fifth Straight Day: 800 Jet Drones in 4 Days

Russia attacked Kyiv and towns around the Ukrainian capital for a fifth straight day on Monday, August 31, an assault that comes as Moscow leans more and more on jet powered drones flying up to 600 kilometers per hour, three times faster than the piston engined Shahed drones it has relied on so far. For Serbia, whose energy imports remain partly tied to the stability of transit corridors through eastern Europe and which is negotiating European Union accession chapters while war continues on the bloc’s eastern edge, this kind of escalation is not a distant headline: Brussels still measures a candidate’s progress partly by its willingness to align with the sanctions regime against Moscow, and the very energy grid the region also depends on is now a target of Russian strikes ahead of winter.

A fifth night of air raid sirens

Explosions were heard in central Kyiv around 12:30 a.m. local time on the night between August 30 and 31, reporters on the ground confirmed. Black smoke hung over the capital on Monday morning, and drones kept flying toward the city for hours, with air defense fire audible across Kyiv through the morning and into the afternoon. In Brovary and Boryspil, towns in Kyiv region, the strikes hit several warehouses and distribution centers, injuring four people, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration. In central Sloviansk, in Donetsk region, residential buildings were damaged. In Chernihiv region, which borders Russia, an overnight drone strike damaged an energy facility, according to Vyacheslav Chaus, head of the regional administration there, who gave no further details on the extent of the damage.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on August 30 that Russia had fired around 800 jet drones in four days, while the total number of drones of all types launched between Thursday and Sunday reached nearly 1,500.

Russia’s tactic now is to wear down Ukraine and Ukrainians, our people above all.

Zelensky said in his evening address. Over the past week, he added, Russia sent nearly 2,000 attack drones at Ukraine, more than 1,600 glide bombs and 31 missiles, including North Korean ballistic missiles, an increase on the week before.

Why are jet drones so hard to stop?

Russia is increasingly using Geran 4 and Geran 5 jet drones, which fly at speeds up to 600 kilometers per hour, more than three times faster than the piston engined Shaheds, and that speed is posing a new problem for Ukrainian air defense. They are currently shot down mostly by fighter jets, while dedicated interceptor drones are still being tested.

The hardest ones to intercept are the jet ones. Right now our fighter jets are the ones mostly shooting them down.

Zelensky said, describing the defense against the new weapon. According to him, four companies have developed interceptor drones built specifically for this threat, and one of them, which he did not name, currently has the most successful technology. The goal is to push the interception rate above 90 percent by fall.

Four companies have built appropriate interceptor drones, and one company has the most successful technology. This fall we need to deliver and raise the interception rate well above 90 percent.

Zelensky said in the same address, without specifying which company he meant.

Empty shelves and uncertainty over schools

After the strikes on warehouses and distribution centers, shelves in Kyiv stores were left empty, and by Monday evening it was still unclear whether schools would open on Tuesday at all, even though every school has a shelter and classes can move online if needed. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, told the public that Ukraine would not go hungry despite the supply disruptions and urged people not to give in to rumors, disinformation or panic, saying manufacturers and retailers are currently restructuring supply chains and that European countries stand ready to make up any food shortage if it comes to that.

Conflicting death tolls in Mila

Sources disagree on how many people were killed in the strike on a warehouse in the village of Mila near Kyiv. The Kyiv Independent puts the toll at at least 38 dead and dates the strike to Saturday, while earlier reports, which Srpske novine cited previously, put it at at least 37 dead and 42 injured in an attack on August 29. The strike on the Mila facility itself, according to the same source, actually happened on Friday, August 28, around 8:10 p.m., when a Russian drone hit a building next to the Kyiv-Chop highway, sparking a fire and then a series of ammunition explosions, the prosecutor’s office said. Srpske novine reported on the story earlier, when the death toll stood at 37.

The grid in the crosshairs

Russia is meanwhile continuing to target Ukraine’s energy grid ahead of winter, and Russia’s defense ministry announced on Sunday that it was preparing new, as it put it, massive strikes on energy infrastructure. On the other side, Ukrainian forces struck the Yeysk airbase in Krasnodar region and the Millerovo airbase in Rostov region overnight, said Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, known by the callsign Magyar.

Whether Kyiv’s schools actually open on Tuesday, and whether the interception rate for jet drones climbs above 90 percent by fall as Zelensky has promised, will be decided by the coming days of a war that entered its fifth straight night of air raid sirens on Monday.