Ukraine's innovation in air defense aims to counter Russian drone and missile attacks

12-year-old Liubava and her 17-year-old sister Vira were among 24 civilians killed by a Russian missile which reduced their residential block to rubble earlier this month. They had already lost their father who had been fighting on the front line. Their grieving mother is now the family's sole survivor.

This is the human cost of the largest sustained Russian aerial assault so far – with 1,500 drones and 56 missiles fired at Ukraine within 48 hours.

But the loss of life could have been even higher. Ukraine's air defences prevented more casualties. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, 94% of those long range drones and 73% of the missiles were successfully intercepted. In comparison, on 14 May 2025, Kyiv's forces took down 55% of Russian drones launched nationwide. Ukraine is getting better at defending its skies.

"We are now, unfortunately, the best in the world," says Lt Col Yuriy Myronenko, an inspector general at Ukraine's Ministry of Defence. He admits, though, that shooting down Russia's ballistic missiles "is not so easy".

At the start of the war it relied on old Soviet-era weapons. The West then helped bolster its defences – with expensive, more sophisticated systems including Patriot air defence missiles.

Embracing innovation and technology is giving Ukraine an advantage. At the heart of Ukraine's air defences is the software that tracks every glide bomb, missile and drone launched by Russia.

To start with, Ukraine relied on a network of mobile phones fitted on to telegraph poles to listen out for the sound of approaching drones. Now the system uses more sophisticated sensors.

They're shaped like a large bullet and propelled by four rotors at the base. Ukraine is now producing more than 1,000 of these kinds of drones a day. In March this year they destroyed more than 30,000 Russian drones, according to Ukraine's air force.

From a static launch their P1-SUN interceptor can reach speeds of more than 300km/h (186mph) with a range of more than 30km. The unit had just completed a mission to take out Russian drones.

Welkos, the commander, calls it a "very serious weapon". "It shows how quickly we can adapt, how we can hold the line and how much we can develop," he says. The P1-SUN is 3D-printed and costs around $1,000 (£750) – much less than the large $50,000 delta-winged Shahed one way attack drones that it is designed to destroy.

"We need to cover all of Ukraine and see all the targets. So accordingly, we use all the resources we have," explains Myronenko, who oversees the initiative.

Twenty-five companies have already signed up to the scheme. There is an obvious incentive – to protect their factories and infrastructure. Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy grid during the winter left millions without power.

Carmine Sky is one of the private companies now offering air defences for other private sector clients. They've already built a network of towers fitted with remotely controlled machine guns in the Kharkiv region - close to Russia's border.

Behind the screens are ordinary civilians – mothers, taxi drivers and veterans. Each has been vetted and trained for a few weeks before being allowed to operate one of the remotely controlled guns.

Ruslan, the company's spokesman, tells me their job "is not difficult". Operating the remote machine guns to shoot down drones "is like a computer game - just like an Xbox or PlayStation", he says.

"We're integrated into the military system," he says. "This is not the Wild West, so we follow the instructions and commands of the military."

Ruslan says there are other advantages to getting the private sector involved – "we can scale much faster than the public sector". It's early days, but these private companies have already shot down dozens of Russian drones.

Ukraine has also been stepping up its own attacks on Russia. Recent strikes have caused massive fires at Russian oil refineries across the country and have reached major cities like St Petersburg and Moscow, causing the Kremlin to reduce the scale of its World War Two Victory Day parade in May for fear of a Ukrainian attack.

As a result both sides are now in a battle to innovate as quickly as possible, to gain an advantage in this war. Russia has been developing faster jet-powered drones. It is now flying decoy drones to identify the locations of Ukraine's air defences.

Defending Ukraine's skies will never be easy. President Zelensky has warned that Russia's mass attacks are designed to overwhelm its air defences.

By launching hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles it is inevitable that some will get through - meaning there will be more tragic deaths like sisters Lyubava and Vira.