Glide bombs, Shahed drones and ballistic missiles had attacked the cities of eastern Ukraine a few hours earlier. In Dnipro, where we are, four people, including two children, have been injured in an attack on a residential building.
Hennadij Redko works at Ukraine's Eastern Air Command with the overall management of the air defense. In total, there are about ten million people in these regions who must be protected from the Russian bombings, and the air defense has big problems.
- We have a shortage of almost all weapon systems. If we had enough weapons, we could have protected the whole of Ukraine, he says.
Partly it is due to the Russian intensity of the bombings. Russia is sending more and more advanced drones and robots. Partly it is about the fact that the Ukrainian air defense has been forced to regroup, because Russia is increasingly concentrating its attacks on the capital.
- Many of our units have to work in Kiev, and then other parts become more vulnerable. But that is how we are forced to prioritize.
It's no secret that Ukraine is particularly short of Patriot robots, which are the only effective weapon against Russia's ballistic missiles. Nowadays, the Eastern Air Defense Command can only fire the American anti-aircraft pieces when they spot a really big robot, says Hennadij Redko.
The lack of Patriot has had a snowball effect. Since Ukraine no longer has advanced air defense systems in the eastern parts of the country, the Russian bombers venture closer. Then the risk of them being shot down every time a Patriot is moved to Kiev is reduced.
Since a couple of months ago, Russia reaches the big city of Zaporizhzhia with its glide bombs. Flying this far into Ukrainian territory had previously been out of the question. Now they wreak havoc in the city almost daily.
Hennadij Redko calls Russia's use of glide bombs an obvious war crime. Unlike other heavy weapons, the glide bombs are imprecise and can strike anywhere.
- Russia says that they only strike military targets, but it is probably only their own population that believes that.
Fighting the KAB bombs would have been relatively easy if Ukraine had good access to anti-aircraft robots, he claims, but now it is not something that the country's defense can afford to prioritize.
- KAB is a very cheap weapon and they have huge quantities of it. We have to choose what we shoot for, and then it's more important to have a cruise robot that can weigh a ton and confidently go to the target.
The big change this fall is otherwise the new Russian Shahed drones, which are controlled with jet engines instead of propellers. They reach significantly higher speeds, making them more difficult to fight.
A defense system that has proven to be very effective against the new Russian models, Geran 4 and Geran 5, is the Swedish Robot 70, according to Hennadij Redko.
- We have exhausted everything, literally. As soon as they are delivered across the border, they are driven out for use.
The Swedish anti-aircraft system is portable and can be assembled quickly. It has a range of about nine kilometers and the laser guidance means that the robot cannot be interfered with by electronic warfare.
The system has been donated to Ukraine on several occasions during the full-scale invasion. The first systems arrived from Sweden in the spring of 2023. The next delivery was made in September 2024. In February 2025, the government announced that it is sending the very latest variant of Robot 70 directly from the manufacturer Saab.
Lithuania has also donated the robotic system to Ukraine during the war: the first delivery came in February 2025, and a new delivery was made last winter.
When Russia began using the jet-powered drones on a large scale, the numbers on how many Ukraine managed to combat plummeted. In September, the air traffic alert could be active almost 24 hours a day in some cities.
Now there are signs that the air defense is succeeding better in the fight, but the question is whether Ukraine's current defense tactics are sustainable in the long run. In many places, it is primarily F-16 planes that shoot down the jet-powered Shahed drones.
Although the jet engines have driven up the price of Russia's drones, they are still very cheap compared to what it takes to shoot them down with fighter jets.
If a plane needs to use a fighter robot, a single launch is several times more expensive than a Russian drone. If you manage to shoot down a drone with the automatic cannon, it is significantly cheaper, but ammunition is in great short supply.
