SSeveral hours after kyiv’s nighttime curfew, much of the capital was dark and quiet. Above, on the roof of a gray tower on the outskirts of the city, a small group of uniformed men stood next to two heavy machine guns, scanning the horizon. Soon, a drone appeared.
Once, its unmistakable hum would have sent men rushing for their weapons. Now the air defense unit will check speed and altitude on a monitor before making a decision.
This one was flying too high and too fast. It was one of Russia’s new jet attack drones, a weapon that transformed the battle for the skies over kyiv in just a few months.
“They are so fast that it is extremely difficult to hit them. Our weapons simply cannot reach them. Often we can hear them but we cannot see them. It drives us crazy,” said the group’s commander, who goes by the name Sensei, as he looked out at the city’s skyline.
For three days and nights, the Guardian accompanied Mriya, kyiv’s largest volunteer air defense formation, through its network of outposts around the capital, from the rooftops of skyscrapers to truck-mounted machine gun positions in the deserted fields on the city’s outskirts.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has relied on unpaid volunteers, often armed with Soviet-era weapons, as part of the air defense network protecting its cities, homes and families.
For years, they have proven remarkably effective, becoming a key part of the response to the Iranian-designed Shahed drones, which Russia calls Geran-2 and which began mass launches in late 2022.
“We live a double life. By day I take care of paperwork. At night I shoot down drones,” says Oleksandr, a lawyer, standing next to his truck-mounted machine gun in a field outside kyiv. “It’s a strange duality. Over time, you get used to it.”
But the war in Ukraine is moving at extraordinary speed, and units like Mriya are struggling to keep up.
Since the summer, Russia has deployed more and more jet drones that crews say can travel at about 600 km/h (373 mph), much faster than the original propeller-driven Shaheds, and reach altitudes of up to 10 km (6 miles), well beyond the range of the volunteers’ guns.
The interception rate of new drones in Ukraine is between 50 and 60%.
“In 2023 and 2024, we cut them down in batches,” Artem, a 63-year-old military veteran, said proudly. On a good night, he added, a single crew could take down three or four Shaheds.
Now his unit had managed to shoot down a single jet drone after it slowed enough to come within range of their guns. “There is this feeling of helplessness,” he added.
The problem, Artem explained, was that the weapons’ sights were designed for slower targets. Jet drones fly so fast that shooters must aim beyond their field of vision to hit them. “The Shahed no longer fits into our sighting grid,” he declared.
UKraine’s air defenses operate as a tiered system, with different weapons suited to different threats. Volunteer machine gun teams work alongside interceptor drones to hunt down the slower, low-flying Shaheds. More sophisticated weapons, including rare U.S.-made Patriot batteries, are needed against cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
For now, the main response to jet drones has been fighter jets, notably the F-16s, which are expensive to fly and put their pilots at risk.
Russia’s introduction of new drones comes at a particularly critical time for Ukraine. While its ground offensive progresses slowly, Russia has sharply intensified its air campaign, striking kyiv almost daily in a bid to make the capital unlivable as winter approaches.
Last week, jet drones repeatedly struck bridges over the Dnipro River in Kyiv, leading to restrictions on several of the city’s main crossings. Russia launched a new large-scale bombardment of Ukraine on Wednesday, firing dozens of missiles alongside drones and causing further disruptions to the capital’s electricity and water supplies.
The attacks upended daily life in a city that for much of the war was considered relatively safe compared to towns closer to the front. Anti-drone nets, long familiar in front-line cities, began appearing around kyiv, and during the most violent attacks, some people took to sleeping in metro stations.
Moscow also began sending waves of jet drones throughout the day, a departure from years of assaults taking place mostly at night.
“Every hour, two or three people arrive,” says Oleksandr, the lawyer who joined Mriya early last year. His mobile group was once deployed from his base as the drones approached the city, but now spends hours waiting in the fields.
“They are fast and keep our groups moving constantly. Some days it seems like Russia has an inexhaustible supply of them,” he shrugged.
Mriya volunteers are, in a way, the mirror of Kyiv. The teams supported by the Guardian included an advertising creative director, an intercom repairman, a hand-to-hand combat trainer and the former director of a design institute.
The Army supplies units with heavy machine guns, including American-made Browning M2s and Soviet-era DShKs, both designed before World War II. But volunteers pay for their own vehicles, fuel and other equipment.
What united them, they said, was that the issues seemed close to them. “If we let a drone pass, it means it will head towards the city and can kill our families,” said Ivan, a professor at kyiv University.
Ivan joined the unit after a Shahed struck the yard of his house about a year and a half ago. “It terribly frightened my family and destroyed my property,” he said. “So I also had a personal score to settle. I have two children. The more trash that is destroyed on the approach to kyiv, the less likely it is that my children will be hurt.”
When a shift arrives in the morning, he teaches his classes online from his workstation, on his phone. Others described volunteering as a way to regain some agency in the face of a war that has left millions of Ukrainians powerless.
“In the city you can’t do anything. People sit in basements, air raid shelters or apartments and wait: will you be lucky or not, will it hit or not?” said Oleksandr. In position, he said, there was at least a chance of shooting one down.
However, help could be on the way. Back on the ground, Artem pulled out a tablet showing a live map of drones over Ukraine.
Among the moving icons was one that volunteers began seeing more and more often: Ukraine’s new generation of high-speed interceptor drones, designed to track down their Russian counterparts.
He pointed to two Ukrainian interceptors traveling at more than 600 km/h. Moments later, each shot down a Russian drone and disappeared from the screen.
Across the country, the Ukrainian government and private defense companies have been racing to build jet-powered interceptors capable of rivaling Russia’s latest drones.
“We have to admit that we were surprised by these jet-powered Shaheds,” said Stanislav Hryshyn, co-founder of General Cherry, one of Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturers, which is developing the new interceptors.
The biggest obstacle, he explained, was the shortage of the small jet engines that power them, which Russia sources largely from China. Neither Ukraine nor Europe, Hryshyn said, has built the industrial capacity needed to produce the required quantities.
Hryshyn estimates it would take three to four months before Ukraine could produce enough interceptors to rival Russian jet drones.
Even if Ukraine deploys thousands of new interceptors in the coming months, any advantage could prove short-lived. Russia has repeatedly adapted its drones, changing their speed, altitude and flight paths in response to Ukraine’s defenses, and Hryshyn said each new countermeasure invited another innovation.
“It’s a constant race to see who gets there first,” Hryshyn said. “A race for life or death.”
Gn world
