Hundreds of Russian Shaheds are descending on Ukraine in the daytime, signaling a new kind of warfare

• Instead of using Shahid to launch attacks at night, Russia is now trying to carry out strikes lasting several days.

• Ukraine said this week that it had been attacked by more than 1,500 drones and 50 missiles for two consecutive days.

• Two analysts who have studied the Shahd war said it was an early sign of a new strategy aimed at weakening Ukraine.

It follows two days of near-constant drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, culminating in Russia’s largest and most ruthless long-range assault yet in the war.

This is another major development in Russia’s new drone warfare that has emerged in the past few months.

The Kremlin, which had previously relied on delta-wing Shahid aircraft to attack Ukraine at night – when they were harder to detect – now began deploying them in extended windows for long periods of time, forcing Ukrainians to hide for hours or take the chance to live their lives.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine was under siege from Wednesday to Thursday by 1,567 drones and 56 missiles, calling the attacks “massive and almost continuous.”

Senior Ukraine analyst Igor Anokhin said this week’s bombings were a “classic example” of this trend. He sifted through data on Russia’s Shahd attacks for the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank.

He told Business Insider that the latest attack marks the fifth time this year that the Kremlin has used a sustained strike period.

“I don’t think it’s a fully mature model yet, but it’s clearly becoming a new operating model,” Anokhin said.

Anokhin added that the first prolonged attack occurred in late March, when Russia launched nearly 1,000 drones into Ukraine within 24 hours. Another notable example occurred in mid-April, when sustained drone and missile attacks lasted for 32 hours.

The average daily number of drones this year ranges from 143 to 219, depending on the month, according to Anokhin’s analysis of Ukrainian and open source data.

Russia also regularly targets Ukraine’s power grid, forcing millions of people to spend the winter without heat in an effort to reduce the population’s willingness to resist.

Why strike during the day?

As Business Insider’s Jake Epstein and Rob Leslie discovered during the recent attacks, enduring a prolonged attack is exhausting. They hid in a Kiev air raid shelter for hours and stayed up all night waiting for explosions to shake the city.

Shahd attacks are so frequent that they have become part of civilian life in Ukraine. Anokhin said that was the point.

“The main targets are psychological stress and economic terror,” he said. “Putting Ukrainian cities on high alert for extended periods of time, disrupting civilian life, and targeting energy and critical infrastructure.”

The increased pressure has also put Ukraine’s multi-layered air defense network to the test. To counter the airstrikes, the Ukrainian military deployed mobile machine gun crews, interceptor drones, electronic warfare and high-end defense missiles.

The massive threat from Russia has overwhelmed the system. For example, it risks forcing Ukraine to launch rarer and more expensive interceptors to destroy cheap drones, making room for ballistic missiles to find targets.

Russia adopted this tactic this week: After hours of drone strikes, missiles began hitting Kiev on Wednesday night.

Zelensky said that air defense systems destroyed at least 93% of Russian drones in the attack, but only 73% of Russian missiles were shot down. He added that as of Thursday evening, 24 people had been confirmed dead and 48 others injured.

Each Shahed costs less than $50,000 to produce and can carry up to 110 pounds of explosives, which when detonated creates a shrapnel-filled explosion powerful enough to destroy buildings and kill civilians.

Federico Borsari, a researcher at the European Center for Policy Analysis who focuses on drone warfare, told Business Insider that the daytime attacks also had a secondary purpose.

Many of Russia’s decoy drones are equipped with electro-optical sensors that can scout the battlefield while absorbing Ukrainian anti-aircraft munitions, he said.

“The main targets are usually mobile fire groups, ground-based anti-aircraft launchers and other high-value military targets,” Borsari added.

In other words, daytime drone waves can pinpoint high-value targets for follow-up attacks.

Anokhin’s analysis found that 66% of the unidirectional drones launched by Russia in April were Shahid drones, while the remainder were decoys or other types of attack drones.

production problems

Russia has launched attacks over longer periods of time before, but never on this scale. Both Borsari and Anokhin said a key change is Russia’s growing ability to deploy more drones more quickly.

“Destroying Alabuga’s production would be ideal,” Anokhin said.

Yelabuga Special Economic Zone, also known as Alabuga, is located in the Tatarstan region of Russia and is the site of the Kremlin’s main Shaheds factory, As an important part of Russia’s war effort, it has received close attention around the world.

While Ukraine sent its own long-range drones to attack the plant, Russia is working quickly to boost production there.

On May 9, Radio Free Europe reported that satellite images showed that new facilities and hangars had been added to the site, the campus had been expanded by 340 hectares, and construction was beginning on an additional 450 hectares.

Per Anokhin, Shahd, Russia deploy Drone strikes have been growing steadily since the start of 2025 and now account for an increasing share of drone strikes, rising from 59% of total launches last fall to 64% this spring.

However, Ukraine’s disorganized air defense network appears to be working. Anokhin’s analysis shows that while nearly a third of Russia’s Shahed met their goals in the fall, that share had dropped significantly to about 14% in April.

The country has been emphasizing cheaper systems such as intercepting drones. The Ukrainian Air Force estimated in February that about 30% of Russian drones were shot down by these cheap long-range systems, although reports have risen to 70% in some periods.

Borsari and Anokhin separately said they believed Russia’s daytime-extended drone wave would become a more permanent part of the war.

“However, it is unclear whether Russia’s targeting strategy is bearing fruit,” Borsari said.

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