Hundreds of Russian Shaheds are descending on Ukraine in the daytime, signaling a new kind of warfare

• Instead of attacking at night with the Witnesses, Russia is now conducting days-long attack campaigns.

• This week Ukraine said it was attacked with more than 1,500 drones and 50 missiles over two days.

• Two analysts who studied the battle for Shahed said it was an early sign of a new tactic aimed at wearing down Ukraine.

For Ukrainian cities, the last two days have been a near-constant barrage of drone and missile attacks, culminating in Russia’s largest and most relentless long-range offensive yet in the war.

This is another important part of the new style of Russian drone warfare that has emerged in the last few months.

Where the Kremlin previously relied on attacking Ukraine delta-winged Shahads At night – when they are harder to spot – he begins to place them in expanded windows that open during the day, forcing Ukrainians to hunker down for hours or take their chances at survival.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy He said his country was under siege by 1,567 drones and 56 missiles from Wednesday to Thursday, describing the attack as “massive and almost continuous”.

Igor Anokhin, a senior Ukrainian analyst who analyzes data on Russia’s Shahed attacks for the Washington-based think tank Institute for Science and International Security, said this week’s bombing was a “significant example” of this trend.

The latest salvo is the fifth time this year that the Kremlin has used periods of non-stop attacks, he told Business Insider.

“I wouldn’t call it a fully established model yet, but it’s clearly becoming a new operational model,” Anokhin said.

The first of these long-term attacks was carried out by Russia in late March. Nearly 1000 drones were launched Anokhin added that they arrived in Ukraine within 24 hours. Another notable example occurred in mid-April, when non-stop drone and missile attacks lasted 32 hours.

This works out to an average of 143 to 219 drones per day this year, depending on the month, according to Anokhin’s analysis of Ukrainian and open source data.

Russia also frequently targets Ukraine’s power grid, forcing millions of people to spend the winter without heating in a campaign aimed at weakening the public’s will to resist.

Why is there a day strike?

As Business Insider’s Jake Epstein and Rob Leslie found during the latest attack, enduring a prolonged attack is exhausting. They hid for hours Kyiv bomb shelterThey waited sleeplessly throughout the night as the explosions shook the city.

Shah attacks occurred so frequently that they have now become an accepted part of life for Ukrainian civilians. Anokhin said that this was the main thing.

“The real purpose is psychological pressure and economic terror,” he said. “Keeping Ukrainian cities on high alert for hours, disrupting civilian life and targeting energy and critical infrastructure.”

The increased pressure is also putting Ukraine’s multi-layered air defense network to the test. To counter air attacksUkrainian forces deploy a mix of mobile machine gun crews, interceptor drones, electronic warfare and high-end defensive missiles.

transparent volume of threats Offers from Russia challenge this system. For example, it risks forcing Ukraine to fire rarer, expensive interceptors to destroy a cheap drone, leaving room for ballistic missiles to find their targets.

Russia applied this tactic this week as well: After hours of drone attacks, missiles began hitting Kiev on Wednesday evening.

Zelenskyy said that air defenses destroyed at least 93 percent of Russian drones during the attack, but only 73 percent of Russia’s missiles were shot down. As of Thursday evening, 24 people were confirmed dead and 48 were injured, the official added.

Each Shahed costs less than $50,000 to manufacture and carries up to 110 pounds of explosives that hit with a shrapnel-laden explosion powerful enough to paralyze buildings and kill civilians.

Federico Borsari, a researcher focusing on drone warfare at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Business Insider that daylight strikes could also serve a secondary purpose.

most Russia’s decoy drones He said they were equipped with electro-optical sensors that could monitor the battlefield while absorbing Ukrainian air defense munitions.

“The main targets are generally mobile fire groups, ground-based air defense launchers and other high-value military targets,” Borsari said. he added.

In other words, daytime drone waves can locate high-value targets for a follow-up attack.

Anokhin’s analysis found that 66 percent of one-way drones launched by Russia in April were Witnesses, while the rest were decoy or other offensive drones.

production problem

Russia has attacked at longer intervals before, but not on this scale. Both Borsari and Anokhin said one key change is Russia’s increased ability to deploy more drones faster.

“It would be ideal to destroy production in Alabuga,” Anokhin said.

Yelabuga Special Economic Zone, also known as Alabuga in Russia’s Tatarstan region, is home to the Kremlin’s main factory for Shahedes, It came under intense global scrutiny as a vital component of Russia’s war effort.

Ukraine is sending its own long-range drones to attack the factory, while Russia is working to rapidly increase production there.

on May 9 Radio Free Europe He reported that the satellite images showed that the campus had been expanded by 340 hectares, while new facilities and hangars were under construction in an area of ​​450 hectares.

Per Anokhin, Martyr of Russia deployment It has grown steadily since early 2025 and now accounts for a larger share of drone attacks; from 59% of total launches in the fall of last year to 64% this spring.

But Ukraine’s dispersed air defense network appears to be working. Anokhin’s analysis shows that almost a third of Russia’s Witnesses hit targets in the fall, but that rate dropped sharply to around 14% in April.

The country focuses on cheaper systems. interceptor drones. The Ukrainian air force estimated in February that about 30 percent of Russian drones were shot down by these cheap remote systems, although the reported rate rose to 70 percent in some periods.

Borsari and Anokhin said separately that they believe Russia’s extended daytime drone waves will become a more permanent fixture in the war.

“But it is unclear whether Russia’s targeting strategy has borne fruit,” Borsari said.

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