Ukraine’s government has approved a Strategy for the Engineering Equipment of Defensive Lines through 2028. It makes strengthening anti-drone protection of logistics routes one of its priorities, the Defense Ministry says.

Russian FPV drones hunt almost anything that moves within 15 to 30 kilometers of the front, which has forced Ukraine to drape its logistics roads in overhead netting, wire-mesh canopies and reinforced barriers that catch an attacking drone before it reaches a vehicle. Ukraine had already built more than 1,066 kilometers of such protection by mid-July and aims for 4,000 kilometers by the end of 2026.

The new strategy turns that scramble into a single national standard, setting deadlines, assigning responsibility, and building control mechanisms, the ministry explained.

“Solutions that have proven effective we will scale. But we will also account for new challenges, threats and changes in Russian tactics. The main goal is the protection of our service members and civilians,” the Defense Ministry says.

One digital map for every trench and net

The plan puts the entire defensive network onto a screen. To track and monitor the state of defensive lines, Ukraine will introduce a single digital geographic information platform, built on and expanding existing systems, including the DELTA situational-awareness system.

The database will hold object passports, photographs, and data on each structure’s location and condition, helping officials verify that work is done, identify repair needs, and distribute resources on evidence rather than guesswork.

From trenches to supply roads, one cycle

The strategy covers the full span of military engineering. Its main lines of work are building and maintaining fortifications, laying engineering obstacles, strengthening anti-drone protection of logistics routes, using modern designs, materials and camouflage, creating a reserve of construction materials, and maintaining digital records of the work.

Developed on the Defense Ministry’s initiative based on combat experience, the document spans the entire cycle from planning and construction to accounting, upkeep, and restoration, the ministry noted. Financing will come from the state and local budgets for the relevant year and from other sources not prohibited by law.

Ukraine’s operation to strike Russian targets at operational and strategic depth is continuing, Unmanned Systems Forces Commander Robert “Madiar” Brovdi said. He listed data centers, military and strategic sites, and energy hubs “deep in the swamps,” his usual name for Russia.

The fresh statement lands amid fears that a Starlink disruption could break front-line operations.

Overnight into 14 October, the 7th Air Assault Corps said the faster StarShield military package, an advanced version of Starlink that its units depend on, had been throttled, halting a series of missions. Against that backdrop, Brovdi says his branch’s strikes are not falling.

“A serious brawl is underway in conditions of significantly worse weather, drizzle, fog, and precipitation,” Brovdi says, underscoring that the pace held through conditions that usually ground drones.

Over the first two weeks of October, the drone branch verified 7,306 Russian soldiers killed or wounded, up 59.45% on the same period in August and 24.65% in September, he writes on his Telegram page, calling the trend the opposite of de-escalation.

Where the killing climbs fastest, and who is doing it

One sector stands out above the rest. On the Dobropillia-Pokrovsk axis, in the zone of the Azov group, the branch’s drones accounted for 3,221 Russian losses in the first two weeks of October, a 102% jump on August and 42.5 percent on September, Brovdi reports.

The figures cover only the drone branch and are verified in the military’s Delta, the video fixation system, he stresses, so the full count of Russian losses across all Ukrainian forces can be much higher.

The scale of a campaign that will not slow down

The numbers behind the claim are large. Over the first two weeks of October, the branch flew 124,500 combat missions, strike and reconnaissance, and hit 32,172 Russian targets, of which manpower was 22.7%, by his count.

That works out to about 2,298 Russian targets a day, he adds, the kind of tempo that makes any talk of a lull on the front hard to square with what his drones are recording. The deep-strike half of that campaign has grown 1,150% over 2026, reaching military-industrial and energy sites far inside Russia, according to Euromaidan Press.

Units of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Russian troops since the start of 2026. That is more than 150,000 since the force was created on 11 June 2025, the force said on Telegram.

Drones have become the deadliest weapon of this war, accounting for about 96% of Russia’s battlefield casualties earlier this year. These hits are verified on video in the military’s Delta system, which is how the force counts only the losses its own pilots confirm.

“Behind these figures is the daily combat work of our soldiers, thousands of sorties, precise strikes, and the constant improvement of unmanned technologies,” Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said.

Each strike reduces Russia's combat potential and reflects the coordinated work of the force’s units, it added.

A toll that keeps climbing

Overall, drone branches of the Ukrainian Army had carried out more than 1 million verified strikes on enemy targets since January, killing or seriously wounding about 193,500 Russian troops, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported in July.

Those strikes roughly doubled over the first half of the year, from about 105,800 in January to more than 200,000 in June, the ministry noted.

Meanwhile, Commander of the separate Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces Robert “Madiar” Brovdi says the numbers are still growing. In the first five days of October, the force’s pilots killed or wounded 2,699 Russian soldiers, 39.7 percent more than in the same period of September.

He tied the rising number to Russia's assaults in Donbas, as the offensives for the fortress-belt cities that have been Ukraine's protection against full region's occupation since 2014, were ongoing.

Why the drone branch matters

The force fields are the cheap, fast weapons that now do most of the killing on the front. Interceptor and strike drones let Ukraine hit troops, logistics, and command posts while keeping its own soldiers farther from the fight.

In September, Ukraine struck more Russian air defense systems than in each month since 2024. Its Defense Ministry reports that Ukraine stepped up strikes on targets deep in the Russian rear, and this is how it hit this amount of protective systems, radars among them, in the history of the ePoints program.

ePoints are points that Ukrainian units earn for verified combat missions, from strikes to reconnaissance and evacuation, and spend on drones, ground robots, and electronic warfare systems on the state's Brave1 Market. In September, units confirmed hits on 33,087 Russian soldiers under the program, more than in any month this year except March and April.

Every result is recorded on video in the DELTA battlefield system and verified by the Brave1 defense innovation cluster, the ministry said. Russian losses are also growing far from the contact line, it added, and units are finding new and unconventional ways to inflict them.

The strikes are meant for "bleeding the Russian war machine," Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said on 4 October.

Deep strikes pass 11,000

In September, the number of hits more than 20 kilometers behind the front line exceeded 11,000 for the first time. Hits beyond 50 kilometers also set a record, most of them along the Russian logistics route between Mariupol and Crimea. One air defense system was hit 552 kilometers away.

Ukraine also now has a ballistic missile for such depths, not simply drones. It fired its first FP-7 in combat on 1 October, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced without naming a target. Its maker, Fire Point, plans an interceptor version that aims to achieve a first ballistic missile shoot down by mid-2027.

Troops down more propeller Shaheds

Even as Russia kept changing its air attack tactics and launched more jet-powered drones, Ukrainian troops shot down 28% more non-jet-powered Shahed drones in September than in August, the ministry said.

Jet drones remain the harder target. Ukraine shoots down 85 to 92% of propeller-driven Shaheds but only 50 to 60% of jet-powered ones, Zelensky said on 4 October, when he announced a new small missile called Nika for testing against them. Ukraine's military intelligence estimates that Russia builds about 3,000 jet-powered drones a month.

Ukraine's drone pilots are killing and wounding far more Russian infantry than they did a month ago. Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces confirmed that their pilots took out 2,699 Russian infantry from 1 to 5 October, 39.7% more than in the first five days of September, Commander Robert "Madiar" Brovdi wrote on Telegram on 6 October.

The Unmanned Systems Forces, the branch of Ukraine's military that fights with drones, count only losses verified by their own pilots in the military's Delta system, so the full picture of Russian losses is larger, Brovdi stressed. Compared with the first five days of August, the rise is 76.5%, from 1,529 losses, which he ties to denser and more frequent Russian assaults.

The sharpest growth occurred in the area of the 1st Azov Corps of Ukraine's National Guard on the Dobropillia-Pokrovsk axis in Donetsk Oblast, as fighting for fortress-belt cities continues. Drone pilots recorded 1,268 Russian losses there, 43% more than the 884 of early September and 91% more than the 664 of early August.

"Russia's hidden mobilization is in action. This is the beginning," Brovdi said ironically.

Russia doubles its monthly recruitment pace

Russian recruitment, mobilization, and contracts run at about 70,000 people a month, twice the 35,000 monthly average from January to August 2026, Brovdi noted on 16 September, when he forecast 12,500 losses for his pilots in September.

He expected the toll to keep climbing. Bigger records still lie ahead because of Russia's unannounced mobilization, Brovdi added on 24 September.

Drone pilots outpaced August by a quarter

September was completed above that forecast. The pilots logged 13,358 Russians killed or wounded, 25.35% more than the 11,010 of August, an average of 445 a day against 355, Brovdi reported. By his count, that equals the full assault infantry of one battalion every day, and his pilots hit a Russian target every 42 seconds.

Two sets of axes took the heaviest toll. In the first 24 days of September, the Dobropillia and Pokrovsk axes accounted for 4,018 losses, and the Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole axes for 3,021, according to Brovdi. The first of those groups covers the same Dobropillia-Pokrovsk axis where the Azov corps zone recorded the sharpest October rise.