The Russian leader’s nightmare is finally becoming a reality.
at the opening of the Russia n president’s international economic forum in St. Petersburg, when Kyiv’s drones struck a naval base, set an oil terminal on fire, and plunged the city’s airport into chaos.
The attack on Putin’s hometown was a humiliation on the world stage. For Serhiy Goncharov, a Ukrainian defense industry lobbyist, the drones that buzzed 657 miles into Russia for the operation are just one more reason for “much more optimism” about the war than even a few months ago.
“That’s what impresses me,” Goncharov said in an interview with the Daily Beast about the long reach of the drones into Russian territory. “That would have been unimaginable in 2022, when the war started. I was a deputy Minister of Interior Affairs then, and the biggest challenge for us was just survival.
”Putin at a plenary session of his St. Petersburg International Economic Forum —he used a speech at the event to encourage Russian forces to keep fighting after more than 4 years of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The reason for his uplifted spirits is Ukraine’s so-called middle-strike drones that fly about 100 miles and can hit moving targets on roads or trains rolling on tracks. One example is the FP-2 made by Fire Point.
Further into Russia, long-range drones are striking oil refineries nearly every day. Goncharov, who is now the director of Ukraine’s National Association of Defense Industries, is 42 years old. His hometown of Makiivka has been under Russian control since 2014; it is in Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine, that Putin wants to capture and officially recognize as part of Russia. His hometown is close to the front but has been closed to him for 12 years by brutal fighting.
Many Ukrainians, as well as the world’s leaders, share Goncharov’s amazement with the newest generation of drones. In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised Ukraine’s ability to quickly scale its “exquisite systems. ”In Brussels, European Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said that Ukraine has “the best army in Europe and perhaps in the world. ” And in Kyiv, the presidential chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, predicts peace already this year: “We should stop where we are.
” Goncharov agrees with Budanov—that peace should be achieved by maintaining Ukrainian pressure, mostly with drones. New models are appearing every week. On Thursday, Ukrainian company Martyn Tech unveiled a new drone called Adis, which will be controlled via satellite, unlike traditional radio-controlled drones, whose range is limited by the radio horizon.
This new type of drone can perform strikes, lay minefields, all while keeping its pilots out of danger, as Adis devices can be operated from anywhere, even thousands of miles away in another country. Ukraine develops its new technologies under a rain of missiles and Russia’s own drones. Russia develops its drones too. What had been devices that flew 18 miles are now weapons reaching out to 100 miles.
The so-called “kill zone,” an area saturated with killer drones along the frontline, is growing wider as ranges increase. Drones, like mosquitoes, zoom over ever more land in Ukraine and Russia, hitting military targets and often killing civilians.
“It is time to end this war,” Zelensky wrote in his social media post about the operation, saying that it is Putin who “wants to keep fighting. ”Drones can find and kill anybody now, it seems. Their use in assassinations is an emerging trend. On November 30, a Russian drone killed an employee of Fire Point by crashing into his house in the Kyiv region.
Fire Point says it produces about 300 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles every day and is experimenting with a missile called FP-7. X, designed to intercept ballistic missiles, which it hopes will replace American Patriots at some point in the future. On April 20, Ukraine Defense Ministry adviser r Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov said that Russians tried to kill him, too, with a jet-powered drone that flew into Ukraine. The Russian strikes aimed at individuals are raising alarms.
“In both cases, they were terrorist-style assassination attempts,” Goncharov told the Daily Beast. “I am sure that my country will not become a terrorist and stay humane. ” Some of Ukraine’s attack drones, including Hornet and Martians, use artificial intelligence-assisted targeting and “machine vision,” which enables drones to bypass electronic warfare that jams radio signals and strike their targets autonomously. Serhiy Goncharov said the drone attack on St. Petersburg would have been “unimaginable” at the start of the war.
There is no concern about drones having a mind of their own, targeting everybody everywhere with the help of AI, Goncharov said.
“We are dealing with a full-scale invasion; we’ll use any method to defend ourselves for our independence, for our survival. Some companies develop AI, others develop swarm technology, when many drones work together as a swarm,” Goncharov said.
“AI gives us lots of opportunities, since in quantity we are smaller than Russia, so we have to come up with better technological solutions. ”a record-breaking 8,150 drones at Ukraine, killing and injuring more than 600 civilians. Ukraine’s military warns that Russia is planning to increase attacks with drones that are faster and harder to shoot down by 50 percent. But Putin, too, has reason to be fearful.
His own senior officials have informed the Kremlin that the nation’s spending on his war is becoming unaffordable, according to“There is a hope now that Russian citizens will act more to stop the war, when they feel it more – the entire strategy is meant to give us a better position at negotiations for a ceasefire than a year ago,” the editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, a leading Ukrainian news outlet, Sevgil Musaieva, told the Daily Beast. After the St. Petersburg strike, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sent Putin an open letter calling for a “face-to-face meeting.
” Zelensky proposed a ceasefire, “ending this war through direct engagement between us – and you. ” The Ukrainian president chose an important moment: Putin’s speech at an economic forum in St. Petersburg was scheduled for the next day.
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