Maria Troyanivska had just come home when a Russian drone crashed into her bedroom. "It flew in through the window, right into her room," her mother Viktoria told The BBC. Following the explosion, she and her husband Volodymyr rushed to the next room, where they saw their daughter's room was on fire." We tried to put it out, but everything was so hot," she explains through tears. "It was impossible to breathe - we had to leave."Last month, a Russian Shahid drone killed the 14-year-old in her slumber at her suburban Kyiv flat." She died immediately, and then she burned," her mother recounted. "We had to bury her inside a closed coffin."She had no chance of surviving."
Russia's drone strikes on Ukraine are fast growing. According to Ukraine's general staff, over 2,000 were launched in October, setting a new high for the war. According to the same study, Russia launched 1,410 drones in September and 818 in August, compared to around 1,100 in the previous three months. It is part of a larger rebirth of the Russian military. The attackers are marching on the front lines. North Korean troops have entered the fight on Moscow's side. And, with Donald Trump elected to a second term as US president, Ukraine's depleted and war-weary army faces uncertain aid from its major military donor. The majority of the Russian drones pouring down in Ukraine are Iranian-designed Shaheds.
Russia has also begun to fire phony drones with no explosives to confuse Ukraine's air defense units and force them to waste ammo. In comparison to missiles, they are cheaper to construct, easier to shoot, and meant to sap morale. Every night, Ukrainians fall asleep to notifications pinging on their phones, as approaching drones crisscross the country, sounding sirens. Every morning, they wake up to the news of another strike. Drones have struck Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia since November 1. On Sunday, Russia launched 145 drones towards Ukraine. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, this is a record figure for a single day since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Kyiv reported that day that it had shot down 62 drones and that another 67 had been "lost" - meaning they had been downed by electronic warfare or had vanished from radar systems.
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