Russia Gains the Upper Hand in the Drone Battle, Once Ukraine’s Forte

From day one Ukraine has been outgunned, outmanned and is fighting a foe that cares. Nato and the US don't have the resolve to win this one. Game over.

Russia Gains the Upper Hand in the Drone Battle, Once Ukraine’s Forte

Moscow’s military has gotten better at using the war’s deadliest weapons: small, cheap drones

By Ian Lovett, Marcus Walker and Nikita Nikolaienko, WSJ

Nov. 29, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Russia’s increased drone effectiveness against Ukrainian supply lines is the most significant shift in the war in 2025.

KHARKIV, Ukraine—The four Ukrainian soldiers were speeding down a supply road more than 20 miles behind the front line when a Russian drone exploded behind them, throwing the rear of their Nissan Pathfinder into the air.

Capt. Stanislav Derkach was slammed into the dashboard, dislocating his kneecap. He and the three other soldiers hobbled into the woods and watched as a second fixed-wing Molniya drone finished off the SUV.

A few months ago, such rear areas were relatively safe. Now any movement can come under attack. “I consider us very lucky,” said Derkach, who is recovering in a hospital.

Russia’s growing prowess at hitting Ukrainian supply lines with drones is the most important shift in the war in 2025, Ukrainian front-line fighters and analysts studying the conflict say—more significant than Russian forces’ incremental gains in territory.

The tilting tactical balance is also weakening Kyiv’s diplomatic hand. In Washington, influential members of the Trump administration are pushing for an end to the war on terms favorable to Russia, arguing that Ukraine should accept or face a worse deal later because it can’t sustain the fight.

Kyiv and its European backers are scrambling to persuade President Trump that Russia should be pressured to accept a more balanced deal and that Ukraine isn’t sliding toward defeat.

Drone dominance

For most of the nearly four-year-old war, Ukraine has held a clear advantage in battlefield drones, using innovative tactics and technology to compensate for Russia’s greater manpower.

But this fall, Russian forces have gained the upper hand in the tactical drone contest for the first time. They are outnumbering Ukraine’s unmanned aerial vehicles in key sections of the front, while using improved tactics that are testing Ukraine’s ability to keep its front-line defenders supplied.

The trend bodes ill for Ukraine’s ability to hold ground in 2026, unless Ukrainian forces can find answers to Russia’s improved capabilities.

“Not only are lines of communication wrecked; the very idea of a secure rear is fading,” the former head of Ukraine’s military and currently its ambassador to the U.K., Valeriy Zaluzhniy, warned recently.

Russia is still unable to achieve a breakthrough, Zaluzhniy noted in an analysis of the war for Ukrainian news site Mirror of the Week.

Large-scale maneuvering remains nearly impossible on a battlefield where masses of cheap drones can see and target movement by soldiers or vehicles.

But the danger for Ukraine, Zaluzhniy said, is that its undermanned army could reach a point of exhaustion unless it can take back the initiative in the high-tech drone war.

Crossing the Rubicon

Russia has steadily increased its use of small drones throughout the war, deploying them for reconnaissance, guiding artillery fire or attacking Ukrainian front-line forces. It has copied Ukraine’s use of first-person-view, or FPV, drones: exploding devices with four rotors, steered into targets via a live feed on a pilot’s goggles.

Russia long struggled to match Ukraine’s nimble and growing drone forces. For the past two years, FPVs have helped Ukraine to compensate for its chronic shortage of infantry and slow Russia’s offensive operations to a crawl.

Moscow changed its drone tactics in 2024, after Ukrainian forces burst into Russia’s Kursk region.

A new unit called Rubicon recruited many of the best Russian drone pilots and targeted Ukrainian logistics in Kursk. They used fiber-optic drones, connected to the pilot by a long cable so the signal couldn’t be jammed. Struggling to move supplies, Ukraine’s position in Kursk crumbled, leading to a chaotic and bloody retreat this past spring.

Rubicon expanded, taking the tools and tactics that worked in Kursk to the eastern front in Ukraine, while training other Russian drone units in its methods.

Ukrainian officers said Rubicon focuses on midrange targets, usually at least 12 miles beyond the front line, bypassing Ukrainian infantry.

“They have two main tasks: They disrupt our logistics and they target our drone pilots,” said Yurii Fedorenko, commander of the “Achilles” 429th drone regiment.

Ukrainian logistics and drone units are now suffering greater casualties than the front-line infantry, said Konrad Muzyka, director of Polish-based military-analysis firm Rochan Consulting. That is partly because the infantry has so few men, he notes.

Losses are forcing Ukrainian drone pilots to launch their FPVs from further back, restricting the range of their attacks. Meanwhile, Russian drones with longer ranges are flying ever deeper into the rear.

“Russian military learning has eclipsed Ukraine’s for midrange strikes,” said George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “They are interdicting stuff 40 to 70 kilometers from the front line. Previously, for those effects, you needed to fly manned aircraft.”

Ukrainian FPVs still wreak havoc in the last 12 miles or so that Russian troops must traverse to reach the front line. But Ukraine is short of weapons for hitting Russian logistics, command positions and other targets in the rear.

“The kill zone has shifted more behind Ukraine’s front line than the other way around, because Russia has improved,” said Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank based in Philadelphia.

The battle for the city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region shows how Russia has gained the lead in tactical drones. Ukrainian troops fighting in Pokrovsk say Russian drones in the area now outnumber the defenders’ by as many as 10:1.

Russian forces have been trying to conquer the city, once home to 60,000 people, for the past 18 months. Much of it is now a gray zone, with neither side in control and positions scattered throughout the town. Men from both sides hunker down in battered buildings, often unsure of where the enemy is around them.

What worries many Ukrainian soldiers most is how Russia’s longer-range drones are able to pummel their supply lines into Pokrovsk from as far as 40 miles away.

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The roads are so dangerous for vehicles that Ukrainian troops are hiking the last 10 miles on foot, said an officer with the 68th Jaeger Brigade, which is defending Pokrovsk.

As well as fiber-optic drones, Russian units are using Lancet fixed-wing drones with a range of up to 25 miles, and growing numbers of the cheaper Molniya models.

They are basic but effective, said Fedorenko, the Ukrainian drone-unit commander. Molniyas can either detonate their own payload or carry two or three small FPVs, extending their range. Sometimes the FPVs then attack Ukrainians from their rear.

“When you see a drone flying toward the front, you think it’s one of our drones. So it’s really tricky,” Fedorenko said.

Ukraine, which has its own mother ship drones, is trying to regain the edge. Some Ukrainian officers say their drone forces need to give more priority to hitting Russian drone teams and logistics—mimicking Rubicon’s approach—rather than focusing mainly on killing Russian infantry.

“Our main issue is resources. Their advantage isn’t in technology but in scale,” said the head of unmanned systems for Ukraine’s 2nd Corps, who goes by the call sign Volt.

Ukraine wants to make more of its own fiber-optic drones. Fedorenko complained that Russia receives huge supplies of fiber-optic cable from China, while Ukraine is getting little from the West.

“Unfortunately, we have to say that China is a stronger ally on this than the U.S. and Europe combined,” he said.

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Marcus Walker at Marcus.Walker@wsj.com