Russian Military Discloses Large-Scale Ukrainian Strike Drone Activity

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Observers worldwide have become familiar with the Ukrainian Air Force’s daily press releases, which offer figures for the number of strike munitions of various types, including propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones such as the Shahed-136/Geran-2/Garpiya, that Russia is said to have launched and, no less importantly, the number that Ukraine claims to have intercepted through its air defence capabilities or neutralized through its electronic warfare capabilities. The Ukrainian Air Force’s daily press releases are decidedly imperfect—seemingly by design—and are, as such, of limited analytical value for anyone interested in undertaking a serious analysis of the effectiveness of propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones and of air defences thereto. The Ukrainian Air Force’s daily press releases nevertheless constitute a gold standard when compared to the Russian military’s regular press releases on the number of Ukrainian propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones that the Russian military claims to have intercepted—the Russian military does not offer a figure for the number of Ukrainian strike munitions that are launched against Russia in a given timeframe.

On 10 September 2025, the Russian military issued a press release that claimed an unusually large number of strike drone interceptions. Between midnight and 5 AM Moscow time that day, the Russian military claimed to have intercepted a total of 122 Ukrainian propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones. While the veracity and completeness of this figure cannot be independently verified, observers can nevertheless consider the geographical distribution of the claimed interceptions. One of the major analytical limitations of the Ukrainian Air Force’s daily press releases is that it does not break down the where, (precisely) when, and how of claimed interceptions of Russian strike munitions in a given timeframe. The Russian military’s regular press releases similarly do not offer any indication of (precisely) when and how, but do indicate where interceptions are said to have taken place.

While headlines tend to focus on the total number of strike munitions employed in a given timeframe, any serious analysis of the effectiveness of air defences requires information on where strike munitions are intercepted. This is particularly the case in the context of a large country such as Russia, where many of the targets of Ukrainian strike munitions are located many hundreds of kilometers—up to ~2000 kilometers—from the frontline/international border, and when it comes to propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones, which tend to have a cruise speed of around 150 kilometers per hour. Simply stated, Ukraine’s propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones spend hours—sometimes ten or more hours—transiting through Russian airspace—flying over multiple Russian provinces/administrative divisions—to reach their intended targets.

The Russian military’s regular press releases offer insight into how Ukrainian strike drone attacks unfold. On 10 September 2025, Ukraine appears to have primarily used strike drones to attack more proximate targets. On 12 September 2025, however, not only did the Russian military claim to intercept an unusually large number of Ukrainian propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones—which may or may not be reflective of an actual spike in Ukrainian launch strike drone launch activity—but the location of the claimed interceptions indicates a focus on more distant targets. Saint Petersburg and nearby areas may have been the primary focus of Ukrainian strike drone launches on 12 September 2025, given the concentration of claimed Russian interceptions in Russia’s Bryansk, Smolensk, Tver, Novgorod, and Leningrad provinces. No fewer than 172 of the claimed interceptions—77.82%—of claimed interceptions took place in those provinces, which suggests a focus on targets in the direction of Saint Petersburg, and it is notable that 28 of the claimed interceptions—some 12.66% of the total—took place in Leningrad province, which is adjacent to the federal city of Saint Petersburg. That is, there appear to have been many leakers, and Russia’s forward-most line(s) of low-altitude air defences appear to remain quite porous.

The Russian military’s regular press releases amount to a decidedly imperfect data source that is, in most respects, of much less analytical value than the Ukrainian Air Force’s daily press releases. The Russian military’s regular press releases only offer a numerator for the number of Ukrainian propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones that Russia claims to have intercepted without offering a denominator for the number of said munitions that Ukraine launched. The Russian military does a far worse job at presenting this data—an analytically important point in itself given the consequential role of public relations, propaganda, and information warfare in the Russia-Ukraine War—and observers must piece together fragmetentary claims for various timeframes—it is not unusual for the Russian military to issue multiple press releases in a single day without explicating whether the figures are cumulative. Even so, the Russian military’s often disregarded regular press releases on air defence actvity offer non-zero insights into this increasingly important aspect of the Russia-Ukraine War and the immense challenges that Russia continues to face in countering Ukraine’s increasingly widespread employment of propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones.

Russia—even western Russia, which is to say the parts of the country west of the Ural Mountains, which currently delineates the maximum practical range of publicly known Ukrainian strike munitions—encompasses an extremely large surface area. Any military will struggle to secure such an expanse of airspace, especially when the primary threats are fairly low-cost and, as such, very affordable and plentiful, propeller-driven single-use strike drones that primarily fly at a low altitude. The challenges faced by the Russian military in the area of air defence are compounded by the non-availability of radar-equipped airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft and the division of responsibilities and resources for air defence in the Russian military. While this post only examines two single-day snapshots of claimed Russian air defence activity, even such decidedly imperfect and fragmentary data indicates that Ukraine is alternating between target lists so as to stretch Russian air defences thin. The Russian military cannot rapidly redeploy its ground-based air defences from Crimea and Krasnodar to Saint Petersburg and Moscow. This is an area of warfare in which the attacker inherently holds the initiative and the defender must be strong everywhere, which is simply not practical in a world of finite resources that must be allocated, not least when attempting to defend the territorial expanse of western Russia.

It is worth noting the contrast between how Russia and Ukraine appear to be employing their respective propeller-driven strike drone arsenals: Russia repeatedly targets the same areas, above all the Kyiv metropolitan area, despite the predictability of such attacks and, more consequentially, the sustained high concentration of Ukrainian air defences in those sectors. Simply stated, the Russian military does not alternate between target lists in the manner that Ukraine appears to be when it comes to attacking targets deep inside Russia. In this and so many areas of warfare, equipment and technology matter, but can only be as effective and effectual as the minds behind employment practices allow.