Video: Ukraine shoots down three Russian kamikaze drones

Kiev shot down three Russian Shahed kamikaze drones, according to footage released by Ukrainian military officials.

The video posted on Friday on the official site American portable air defense system, which functions as an infrared surface-to-air missile with homing capability.

Newsweek The Ministry of Defense of Russia and Ukraine emailed for comment.

Shahed drones – developed by Iran – are relatively inexpensive UAVs designed to swoop on targets with an explosive payload and are often used by Russia to attack Ukrainian targets.

“The main tasks of the [Shahed drones] “Russia’s offensive campaign depleted stocks of Ukrainian interceptors and pathfinding missiles, meaning they were used ahead of cruise missile attacks to unmask Ukrainian air defense radars that were turned on to attack them,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the UK Think tank Royal United Services Institute with Newsweek.

“The most important thing about the recent loss rates is not that they are being intercepted at high speed – that’s what the Russians expect – but that they are being hit by systems such as man-portable anti-aircraft systems and anti-aircraft guns, which means that the… Ukrainians are getting better at to shoot them down with low-cost weapons to spare their more expensive SAM systems for targets such as cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.”

Ukraine claimed on Friday to have destroyed 70 Russian UAVs within 24 hours.

The report, also published on the ministry’s website, said the Russian military lost an additional 1,140 soldiers, 59 artillery systems and 119 vehicles during the same period.

Kiev’s report comes after Ukraine’s General Staff said it had successfully attacked a Russian base with drones used in the large-scale invasion, causing multiple detonations.

The Ukrainian military said in a Telegram statement that the attack hit the base in Yeysk in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, where 400 Iranian Shahed drones are stored.

In September, Newsweek reported that a Russian colonel who was allegedly involved in training Russian specialists in the use of UAVs, including operators and support personnel for Shahed drones, was eliminated by Ukraine.

According to Interfax-Ukraine, Alexey Kolomeytsev, head of the 924th State Center for Unmanned Aviation of the Russian Defense Ministry, was eliminated after a special operation by a local resistance movement in coordination with the Main Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. citing an unnamed intelligence source.

Newsweek Previously, the losses of Russian troops, tanks and artillery in 2024 (as of September 18) were examined.

According to Ukrainian data, Russian losses of artillery systems reached record levels in July and August. In July, Russia lost 1,520 artillery systems, followed by 1,517 in August. Last month, 1,219 people were reportedly destroyed.

This period also saw some of the highest losses of Russian military personnel to date, with 35,680 in July, 36,810 in August and 38,130 in September.

With 428 tanks destroyed, May was the month with the worst tank losses in Russia this year. For Russian tank crews, it was the second busiest month in the war after October 2023 with 521.

In subsequent months there were 359 losses in June, 300 in July, 193 in August and 291 in September.

Do you have a story we should cover? Do you have questions about the war in Ukraine? contact [email protected]