Ukraine’s war effort faces an uncertain future as Russia launches record-breaking drone strikes

CNN
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Since September 1, the Ukrainian capital Kiev has been spared Russian drone attacks on just one night – October 14.

Every other night, many of its 4.5 million residents have been awakened by sirens and rushed to some form of shelter or hidden in their bathrooms.

In the first week of November alone, the sirens blared for 43 hours.

The attack is just one indicator of Russia’s ability to prosecute its attack to the hilt, even as Ukraine faces deep uncertainty about future support from the United States and Europe.

The cities of Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa have also come under frequent drone and missile attacks in recent weeks in what appears to be a renewed Russian effort to break the resolve of Ukrainian civilians.

On Saturday night, the Ukrainian Air Force registered a record 145 incoming Shahed drones.

The increase in attacks on cities comes as Russian forces continue to make gradual advances in Donetsk, while Ukrainian units are suffering from manpower shortages and increasingly stretched along the major frontline.

Residents of Kiev have told CNN of long and terrifying nights of sirens and strikes, as debris fell on apartment blocks, businesses and homes.

Viktoria Kovalchuk said that after debris from a drone fell near her home last week, her 6-year-old son Teo was “very scared and grabbed me.”

Kovalchuk said Teo was in a state of constant anxiety. “In the last two months, when the shelling has become more frequent, we have been hiding in the bathroom or going down to the shelter in the basement,” Kovalchuk said.

“I can’t remember when we got a proper night’s sleep.”

Businesses are also suffering. A man who gave his name as Maksym told CNN that debris pierced the roof of his restaurant last week, causing about $10,000 in damage.

“We will restore everything on our own and continue to work as we have been doing,” he insisted.

Alarms alone are hugely disruptive to city life. Bridges close, public transport is halted and the two parts of the capital on either side of the Dnipro River are effectively cut off.

Konstantin Usov, deputy mayor of Kyiv, told CNN that during attacks “the city freezes … This alone leads to huge delays in how the city’s economy works.”

Many children do not come to school during alarms, Usov said.

Many air defense batteries are run by volunteers from all walks of life – among them one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, Yuriy Chumak.

Chumak told CNN that territorial defense units included members of parliament, an opera singer and a television host.

“We’ve been doing this for over two years,” he said, but the intensity of drone attacks had peaked over the past two to three months.

Their equipment is low-tech – machine guns on the roofs of eight high-rise buildings. “The drones were flying low, (so) it was realistic and cheap to shoot them down with a machine gun.”

“At night, we are continuously on duty. There are attacks every day now,” Chumak added.

The drone strikes seem intended to instill fear rather than cause mass casualties, but more people have been killed in recent weeks. Among them was 15-year-old Mariya Troyanivska, described by her Kiev school as an inspiration “who loved life and brought joy to everyone around her.”

The relentless attacks seem to be eroding morale. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology regularly asks people whether Ukraine should continue to fight as long as it takes. The number saying yes has fallen from 73% in February to 63% last month.

That perception is likely fueled by news from the front, where Russian attacks continue to erode Ukrainian defenses, particularly close to Pokrovsk’s central hub in Donetsk.

The commander-in-chief of the military, Oleksander Syrskyi, said on Saturday that “the situation is still difficult and has a tendency to escalate. The enemy, taking advantage of its numerical superiority, continues to carry out offensive actions and focuses its main efforts on the directions of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove .”

After a two-week trip to Ukraine last month, analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting said the key problem is integrating newly mobilized troops.

Muzyka wrote on X that the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region “has stretched the already small Ukrainian forces even further.”

The Ukrainians use a variety of battlefield drones to inflict casualties on the Russians. Syrskyi said more than 52,000 enemy targets were destroyed or damaged by drones in October alone.

But drones cannot compensate for a lack of infantry, Muzyka reflected. Despite a law passed earlier this year to improve mobilization, “the presence of newly mobilized units/soldiers is practically imperceptible.”

“We have a situation where the Ukrainians are not only unable to keep up with replacing casualties, but are losing soldiers at an ever-increasing rate due to declining morale,” Muzyka said on X.

Russian forces have become more adept at exploiting weaker points on the front line, enabling them to erode Ukrainian defenses within 10 km of Pokrovsk.

On many other parts of the 600-kilometer front line, the Ukrainians are also on the defensive, with some analysts expecting another Russian push in the south. The only gain for the Ukrainians this year has been inside Russia, where in August they launched a surprise attack in the Kursk region.

The negative outlook has darkened the mood among Ukraine’s allies, who are talking much less about Kiev prevailing on the battlefield – and much more that it holds enough ground to force the Kremlin to negotiate.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hinted as much. “No single capability will turn the tide. No system will end Putin’s onslaught. What matters is the combined effects of Ukraine’s military capabilities — and staying focused on what works.”

Rym Montaz of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, evaluates that there is a “growing, quiet consensus that negotiations, which will involve accepting at least a temporary loss of sovereignty over territories, is the only way to end this war.”

“Kyiv is at one of its weakest points since February 2022, and the prospect of selling such a negotiation is a political minefield” for Zelensky, Montaz says.

Victory, defined by the Ukrainian government as expelling Russian troops from all of its territory, is widely seen as unattainable.

In one new essay in Foreign Affairssays Richard Haass that “Washington must grapple with the grim reality of war and come to terms with a more plausible outcome.”

“There is no game-changing weapon or lifted restriction that will allow Ukraine to simultaneously defend what it already controls and liberate what it does not,” Haas writes.

Ukrainian officials are putting a brave face on a bleak prospect.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday: “I am convinced that we are all united in the goal of achieving a just peace for Ukraine and stopping Russian aggression … We are talking about a just peace, not reconciliation.”

The path to any negotiation is – to put it mildly – unclear. The Kremlin says its goals in Ukraine remain unchanged: the annexation of four eastern and southern Ukrainian regions. Russian forces already occupy almost all of Luhansk and significant parts of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – a total of about 20% of Ukraine.

“If Ukraine wants to persuade Russia to participate in peace talks, it must first stabilize the front and rebuild its forces enough to carry out offensives,” says Muzyka.

Talk of how to end the conflict will now go into overdrive with Donald Trump’s election triumph. Trump has previously said he could end the war in 24 hours, and in September he declared, “I think it’s in the best interest of the United States to end this war and just get it done.”

One option favored by his Vice President-elect, JD Vance, is to freeze the conflict on its current lines with a heavily fortified demilitarized zone to deter future Russian aggression. Along an ill-defined front line hundreds of kilometers long, it would be a daunting and perhaps impossible task.

It would reward the Kremlin with control over already seized territories. Moscow will also demand guarantees of Ukraine’s neutrality or at least an indefinite suspension of the country’s efforts to join NATO.

Although on the back foot, this would be impossible for President Volodymyr Zelensky to swallow without guarantees of Ukraine’s future security. And after the past 1,000 days of sacrifice, it would also be unpalatable to many Ukrainians.

Chumak, the Supreme Court judge, insisted to CNN: “Our mood is patriotic, it has not changed, we are ready to go all the way.”

But the destination can change.