Swarms of Russian drones attack Ukraine nightly as Moscow puts new emphasis on the deadly weapon

The long-range Russian drones come in swarms each night, buzzing for hours over Ukraine by the hundreds, terrorizing the population and attacking targets from the industrial east to areas near its western border with Poland.

Russia now often batters Ukraine with more drones in a single night than it did during some entire months in 2024, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate. On July 8, Russia unleashed more than 700 drones — a record.

Some experts say that number could soon top 1,000 a day.

The spike comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has given Russia until early September to reach a ceasefire or face new sanctions -– a timeframe Moscow is likely to use to inflict as much damage as possible on Ukraine.

Russia has sharply increased its drone output and appears to keep ramping it up. Initially importing Shahed drones from Iran early in the 3 1/2-year-old war, Russia has boosted its domestic production and upgraded the original design.

The Russian Defense Ministry says it's turning its drone force into a separate military branch. It also has established a dedicated center for improving drone tactics and better training for those flying them.

Russian engineers have changed the original Iranian Shahed to increase its altitude and make it harder to intercept, according to Russian military bloggers and Western analysts. Other modifications include making it more jamming-resistant and able to carry powerful thermobaric warheads. Some use artificial intelligence to operate autonomously.

The original Shahed and its Russian replica — called “Geran,” or “geranium” — have an engine to propel it at 180 kph (just over 110 mph). A faster jet version is reportedly in the works.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted that cooperation with China has allowed Russia to bypass Western sanctions on imports of electronics for drone production. Ukraine’s military intelligence estimates that Russia receives up to 65% of components for its Geran drones from China. Beijing rejects the claims.

Russia initially launched its production of the Iranian drones at factory in Alabuga, located in Tatarstan. An Associated Press investigation found employees at the Alabuga plant included young African women who said they were duped into taking jobs there. Geran production later began at a plant in Udmurtia, west of the Ural Mountains. Ukraine has launched drone attacks on both factories but failed to derail production.

A report Sunday by state-run Zvezda TV described the Alabuga factory as the world's biggest attack drone plant.

“It’s a war of drones. We are ready for it,” said plant director Timur Shagivaleyev, adding it produces all components, including engines and electronics, and has its own training school.

The report showed hundreds of black Geran drones stacked in an assembly shop decorated with Soviet-style posters. One featured images of the father of the Soviet nuclear bomb, Igor Kurchatov, legendary Soviet space program chief, Sergei Korolyov, and dictator Josef Stalin, with the words: “Kurchatov, Korolyov and Stalin live in your DNA.”

The Russian military has improved its tactics, increasingly using decoy drones named “Gerbera” for a type of daisy. They closely resemble the attack drones and are intended to confuse Ukrainian defenses and distract attention from their more deadly twins.

By using large numbers of drones in one attack, Russia seeks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and keep them from targeting more expensive cruise and ballistic missiles that Moscow often uses alongside the drones to hit targets like key infrastructure facilities, air defense batteries and air bases.

Former Russian Defense Ministry press officer Mikhail Zvinchuk, who runs a popular war blog, noted the Russian military has learned to focus on a few targets to maximize the impact. The drones can roam Ukraine's skies for hours, zigzagging past defenses, he wrote.

“Our defense industries’ output allows massive strikes on practically a daily basis without the need for breaks to accumulate the necessary resources,” said another military blogger, Alexander Kots. “We no longer spread our fingers but hit with a punching fist in one spot to make sure we hit the targets.”

Ukraine relies on mobile teams armed with machine guns as a low-cost response to the drones to spare the use of expensive Western-supplied air defense missiles. It also has developed interceptor drones and is working to scale up production, but the steady rise in Russian attacks is straining its defenses.

Despite international sanctions and a growing load on its economy, Russia’s military spending this year has risen 3.4% over 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which estimated it at the equivalent of about $200 billion. While budgetary pressures could increase, it said, the current spending level is manageable for the Kremlin.

Over 1.5 million drones of various types were delivered to the military last year, said President Vladimir Putin.

Frontelligence Insight, a Ukraine-based open-source intelligence organization, reported this month that Russia launched more than 28,000 Shahed and Geran drones since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, with 10% of the total fired last month alone.

While ballistic and cruise missiles are faster and pack a bigger punch, they cost millions and are available only in limited quantities. A Geran drone costs only tens of thousands of dollars — a fraction of a ballistic missile.

The drones' range of about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) allows them to bypass some defenses, and a relatively big load of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives makes them a highly effective instrument of what the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls “a cruel attritional logic.”

CSIS called them ”the most cost-effective munition in Russia’s firepower strike arsenal."

“Russia’s plan is to intimidate our society,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that Moscow seeks to launch 700 to 1,000 drones a day. Over the weekend, German Maj. Gen. Christian Freuding said in an interview that Russia aims for a capability of launching 2,000 drones in one attack.

Along the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, short-range attack drones have become prolific and transformed the fighting, quickly spotting and targeting troops and weapons within a 10-kilometer (6-mile) kill zone.

Russian drone units initially were set on the initiative of midlevel commanders and often relied on equipment purchased with private donations. Once drones became available in big numbers, the military moved last fall to put those units under a single command.

Putin has endorsed the Defense Ministry’s proposal to make drones a separate branch of the armed forces, dubbed the Unmanned Systems Troops.

Russia has increasingly focused on battlefield drones that use thin fiber optic cables, making them immune to jamming and have an extended range of 25 kilometers (over 15 miles). It also has set up Rubicon, a center to train drone operators and develop the best tactics.

Such fiber optic drones used by both sides can venture deeper into rear areas, targeting supply, support and command structures that until recently were deemed safe.

Michael Kofman, a military expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Russian advancements have raised new defensive challenges for Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian military has to evolve ways of protecting the rear, entrenching at a much greater depth,” Kofman said in a recent podcast.

FILE - In this photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on July 17, 2025, a Russian serviceman operates a "Supercam" drone in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

FILE - A Ukrainian officer shows a thermobaric charge from a downed Russian drone in a research laboratory in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE - In this photo provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, a resident rides a bike along the street under an anti-drone net in Orikhiv in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, July 15, 2025. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on July 18, 2025, Russian soldiers prepare a strike drone aircraft to fly toward Ukrainian positions in an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

FILE - A Russian drone attacks a building during a Russian missile and drone air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine authorities said Tuesday they will temporarily block an online gaming app that one of two students blamed for a deadly school shooting has avidly used, to assess whether it played a role in fostering such violence.

Three students were killed and 20 others were wounded when the two suspects, aged 14 and 15 and armed with a handgun each, opened fire Monday at the San Jose National High School in central Tacloban city.

The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center said its decision to block Gorebox was prompted by an ongoing police investigation which showed that one suspect was an avid user of the app, adding that this will allow authorities to determine “whether the platform played any role in the actions of the suspects.”

The decision would be enforced starting Tuesday, undersecretary Aboy Paraiso of the cybercrime center said in a statement.

“We cannot ignore possible online influences that may have contributed to this tragic incident,” Paraiso said, without specifying how long the app will be blocked.

The gaming app was launched in 2023 and has been marketed as “a physics-driven sandbox game where creativity meets unrestrained destruction,” the center said.

Paraiso did not say what action might be taken if a government assessment concludes that the app promotes violence among users.

“Beyond this temporary ban, we are reinforcing our monitoring efforts to identify online spaces that may pose risks to young users and to ensure that appropriate interventions are made immediately,” Paraiso said. “Our priority is the safety and well-being of Filipino children exposed to the internet."

Crimes involving the use of firearms are prevalent in the Philippines, partly due to the proliferation of unlicensed firearms, but school shootings are relatively rare.

Regional police chief Brig. Gen. Jason Capoy said the suspects have told investigators they staged the attack to retaliate for being bullied in school. He and other police officials, however, said a thorough investigation ordered by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will look at all possibilities based on witnesses and evidence, including the possible influence of online groups promoting rebellion and violent behavior among youth.

One suspect got the 9 mm pistol from an aunt, a police officer, who was being investigated. The other suspect had a .38 caliber revolver obtained from an employee of a security agency. They managed to bring the guns onto the campus because it had inadequate security for the school’s 1,600 students, police said.

In one video of the attack posted online, students hiding under desks in a shut classroom can be heard screaming and weeping as gunshots are heard outside. Some called their mothers.

The dead and wounded were all students, police said, adding that investigators recovered at least 40 shell casings at the scene.

The suspects were to be turned over to government welfare officers after the investigation because of their age.

The 14-year-old would be exempt from criminal prosecution under a 2006 Philippine law that sets the minimum age of 15 for a minor to be criminally liable and only if authorities determine that a suspect was clearly aware of the crime that was committed and its repercussions.

A police vehicle enters San Jose National High School a day after a shooting incident inside the school in Tacloban city, central Philippines, on Monday June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Panfilo Vallejera)