The Armed Forces of Ukraine are preparing to strike at Russian bases from which Iranian drones have recently been launched, declared Attache for Defense of the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States, Major General Boris Kremenetsky.

According to him, despite the fact that Shahed-136 kamikaze drones are “easy to fight” because they are slow and noisy, Ukraine does not know exactly how many of them Russia has. Iranian drones, which Tehran has repeatedly denied supplying to Moscow, are being used to attack civilian infrastructure. Every day, Ukrainian forces shoot down up to six drones, but the drones cause significant damage.

SA-8 rocket launchers and Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft guns proved to be effective in the fight against Shahed-136. German-made Gepard tanks are also good at shooting down drones. Nevertheless, Ukrainian commanders set themselves the task of finding out where the drones are being launched from and attacking these bases from the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system.

According to evaluation command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in total, Russia used 46 Iranian Shahed-136 drones on the battlefield, of which 60% were destroyed. All of them were launched between September 30th. For comparison: during the same time, Russia fired 20 missiles of various types in Ukraine, including 13 launches of ballistic missiles, General Aleksey Gromov, deputy head of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, said.

The use of Iranian kamikaze drones does not give Russia the same effect that the HIMARS rocket launchers that appeared in the Ukrainian army had on the course of the war, write analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

“The Russian army does not seem to be trying to asymmetrically concentrate the strikes of these drones on key points near the front. They launched a lot of drones on civilian targets behind the lines, probably hoping to achieve a non-linear effect through terror. These actions do not bring success,” military experts stated.