Ukraine launches 1,800km drones from moving sites

A Ukrainian artillery crew unpacks a long-range drone the size of a large suitcase from a camouflaged van at a launch site near Kupiansk. The soldiers finish pre-flight checks in under five minutes and hand-launch the drone into the night sky. It’s heading toward a target more than 1,800 kilometres away—deep inside Russia.

These launch sites operate on a six-hour cycle: load, arm, fly, move. They move every sortie because Russian intelligence spots the launch within minutes of the first motor hum. The drones—modified commercial models with extra fuel tanks—are part of Ukraine’s push to strike Russian logistics nodes and airfields that are beyond the reach of Western-supplied ATACMS. Military analysts say the flights have already forced Moscow to divert air defence assets from the front line, easing pressure on Ukrainian troops in Donetsk.

Each drone carries about 15 kilograms of explosives. Ukrainian officials claim recent hits on oil depots in Tatarstan and a radar station in Belgorod have cut Russian aviation fuel supplies by an estimated 8 percent. The Russian defence ministry calls the drones “terrorist tools,” but its own footage shows fighter jets scrambled in response to the launches. Open-source flight trackers show drones crossing into Russia at 3,000 metres, then diving to 300 metres to evade radar.

The sites will keep relocating until Ukraine’s drone stockpile can be replaced faster than Russia can locate them. Military engineers are testing satellite-guided versions that can be pre-programmed to divert mid-flight if Russian air-defence radars switch on. If those tests succeed, the next wave of launches could hit mobile targets like command trucks instead of fixed fuel tanks, making every sortie harder to predict and therefore harder to stop.