Air alert in many regions
“Swarms” of kamikaze drones are approaching Ukraine
March 17, 2024, 7:59 p.m
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Both Russia and Ukraine rely on “unmanned systems” in warfare. Ukrainian drones recently hit oil refineries on Russian soil, and Russia’s response was only a few hours away.
Air alerts were sounded in several regions of Ukraine early on Sunday evening. The reason was several swarms of so-called kamikaze drones that the Russian military had launched, as the Ukrainian media reported, citing aerial reconnaissance. The air alert applied to the regions of Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy and Dnipro in the east of the country. No further information was initially available.
A few hours earlier, the Ukrainian military had carried out drone attacks on the south of Russia. In Krasnodar, a drone attack caused a fire at an oil refinery. A drone attack on the Novokuybyshevsky refinery operated by Rosneft in the same region was foiled, the local governor said.
According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, at least eight drones were shot down over the southern Russian city of Belgorod. At least one person died when a drone hit Belgorod, and eleven others were injured, according to media reports. The information could not be independently verified.
The Ukrainian military relies on small drones in land warfare for both reconnaissance and attacks on targeted targets – these unmanned aerial vehicles are inexpensive to produce. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, there is already a new type of force called “unmanned systems.”
These new drone forces are “not a matter of the future, but rather something that should lead to a very concrete result in the near future.” Drones have proven effective in combat on the ground, in the air and at sea. Russia, on the other hand, uses Iranian-made kamikaze drones to attack Ukraine’s civil infrastructure and has now switched to smaller aircraft for use on the fronts.