Russia launched record 6,129 drones against Ukraine during July, smashing previous month's high
People look at burning apartments in a high-rise residential building hit by a massive Russian drone and missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 10, 2025. (Ivan Antypenko/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC UA:PBC/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
War
Russia launched a record 6,129 Shahed-type drones against Ukraine in July, according to data from the Ukrainian Air Force, smashing the previous month’s record of 5,337.
Russia's bombardments, a fact of life after three years of full-scale war, have intensified dramatically in June and July, with mass attacks becoming more frequent and more deadly.
The year-on-year increase is even more dramatic — during July 2024, Russia launched 423 drones against Ukraine, meaning a more than fourteen-fold increase over the year.
Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told the Kyiv Independent that the data is approximate and the real number of drones launched by Russia may be higher.
Russia is now capable of launching in a single night as many drones as it did over an entire month in early summer 2024.
Overnight on July 9, Russia launched a daily record of 728 drones, targeting Ukraine's far-western cities, such as Lviv, Lutsk, Khmelnytskyi, and Ternopil.
During this attack, six civilians were killed and 39 were injured across multiple regions, Ukrainian officials said.
Almost all of Russia’s deep-strike drones are divided into three similar varieties — Iranian-made imported Shaheds, which have been in use since late 2022, Russian-made Gerans, which are direct copies of Shaheds, and more recently Garpiya-A1s, which look similar but use Chinese parts.
There are also inexpensive "dummy drones," or Gerbers, which resemble Shaheds but do not carry explosives.
Gerbers distract Ukrainian radar and anti-aircraft fire and typically make up half of the drones sent into Ukraine in a given attack, a Ukrainian mobile defense group that shoots them down told the Kyiv Independent last month.
The data analyzed does not include those used in the frontline areas, such as Lancet kamikaze drones.
Survivors of the latest attack on Kyiv on July 31 which killed at least 31 people and injured 159, described it as "the end of the world" for them.
"I woke up, and I couldn't hear anything," 66-year-old Kateryna Naralnyk told the Kyiv Independent hours later outside her destroyed home, as rescuers cleared the rubble looking for more bodies.
Naralnyk and her son were the only ones to make it out from her apartment on the first floor, which began to collapse as soon as the missile hit the ninth floor of the Soviet-era residential building.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on June 24 that Russia has launched around 28,000 Shahed-type drones since 2022, with around 10% of them fired since the beginning of the month.
Over the past year and a half, there were only two days when Ukraine was not attacked by missiles and drones of various types, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said during a joint press conference with his German Foreign Minister Johannes Wadefuhl on June 30.
The drone threat to Ukraine could soon intensify as Russia ramps up production at its main manufacturing hubs in Yelabuga and Izhevsk, with new models of Geran drones being developed, Ukraine's military intelligence told the Kyiv Independent.
