Ukraine’s elite 1st Special Center of Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) in an interdicting attack overnight Monday-Tuesday hit Russian teams preparing to launch Shahed kamikaze drones at Ukrainian homes and businesses.
The until-now rare pre-emptive strike carried out by waves of made-in-Ukraine FP-2 kamikaze drones hammered Russian flight crews and launch equipment deployed at the abandoned Donetsk airport in occupied eastern Ukraine.
The nocturnal strikes also hit an associated munitions storage site near the city of Manhush in the southern Donetsk region, while supporting flights were carried out by the 414th USF Brigade – a veteran Ukrainian drone unit with more than three years’ experience flying deep strikes into Russia-controlled territory – according to a Tuesday statement by Ukraine’s USF commander Robert Brovdi.
A 90-second USF-published video documented most, but not all, of the USF claims. Images mostly compiled from footage of drones in their terminal phase shortly before striking targets showed buildings – some geo-located to the Donetsk airport site – in drone cross-hairs.
One strike video appeared to show a drone flying into the door of a building. Some targets were shown to have been hit three or more times in succession.
Subsequent images recorded by reconnaissance drones over the same location showed heavy fires burning at strike locations including administrative and terminal buildings and a parking lot. In one cut, individuals claimed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) to be Russian drone operators and service personnel are shown running from a burning building. Russian air defense fire is not visible.
Occupied-region media in Donetsk and the city Mariupol, near Manhush, confirmed intense Ukraine drone activity and ground explosions in the central and south-eastern Donetsk region, without specifying damage or casualties.
The USF statement claimed the drone strikes had hit and put out of action a logistical hub used by Russian forces to launch Geran and Shahed strike drones at homes and businesses inside Ukraine, and for decoy Gebera drones accompanying the strikes.
The attacks also hit a training site used by Russian drone pilots, a maintenance center for those aircraft, and an ammunition dump holding warheads for the Russian strike drones, the report said.
Kyiv Post researchers verified the location of the attack and AFU claims of damage caused, along with most of the claimed strike locations, but could not confirm the Monday-Tuesday timing of the strikes nor precise targets hit independently.
The independent OSINT research group CyberBoroshno in a detailed Tuesday analysis of the USF strike description confirmed practically all claimed strike locations and damage caused. Specific targets hit by USF swarms in the overnight raids, per that research report, included a drone assembly site, a bombardment bunker, storage garages for individual drones, maintenance facilities, storage sites for drone parts at Donetsk airport, and the warhead storage site at Manhush.
That analysis also confirmed repeated drone strikes hitting individual targets. The personnel singled out for a drone attack included a repair crew moving to a drone storage site, probably with the intention of putting out fires there, the CyberBoroshno report said.
Russia’s Tuesday morning defense ministry-produced situation estimate made no mention of the successful Ukrainian anti-drone attacks, and claimed Russian operations along the southern front were proceeding well.
Russia’s drone war
Starting in September 2022, Russia has launched approximately 40,000–50,000 Shahed-type drones at Ukrainian homes and businesses. The relatively cheap bat-winged robot plane is the size of a small automobile and carries a warhead weighing up to 100 kilograms.
Typically, Russia launches 50-100 of the relatively inaccurate aircraft at targets inside Ukraine nightly, though this figure can exceed 800 during a major strike. On Sept. 9-10, 2025, Russia launched drone swarms at western Ukraine, of which 19-23 flew on into Polish air space to be slowly engaged by NATO air defenses. NATO fighter jets scrambled to intercept the Russian drones and at times used multiple air-to-air missiles costing five times the $50,000 price of a typical Shahed to shoot it down.
The single most lethal individual Shahed strike against Ukraine probably took place on Feb. 9-10, 2024, when a drone flew into an apartment killing seven people, including children aged four and seven, plus an infant. Dozens more were injured by that and other drones hitting the building.
Officials from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency have estimated that the Russian Federation has constructed or fielded between 15 and 25 Shahed drone launch sites and support facilities in western and southern Russia and in the occupied Crimea peninsula. Protected by strong air defenses and often camouflaged in towns and villages for most of the war, Shahed operators and their equipment have mostly escaped Ukrainian counterstrikes.
According to USF spokesmen, Ukrainian drone forces scored a rare success against Russian air bombardment troops overnight Dec. 25-26, with a mass strike against a command post in the town of Berdianske in the southern Donetsk region. A USF statement claimed that repeated strikes against the headquarters killed 51 and injured Russian military intelligence personnel responsible for target planning and strike assignments along the war’s southern front. Local media confirmed the fact of the attacks but did not report casualties or damage.