A Russian military truck transports Geran-2 drones across Red Square during a Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russia, on May 9, 2025. (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images)
Russia is increasingly using Shahed-type drones to target Ukrainian front-line positions, likely looking to conserve KAB guided aerial bombs where possible to prepare for a long war ahead, soldiers and experts have told the Kyiv Independent.
Russian troops have been deploying these relatively cheap, self-destructing loitering munitions for nearly a year on the front, but they appear to be building additional launch sites, such as at the Russian-occupied Luhansk airport, to further intensify drone usage, according to Ukrainian aviation expert Anatolii Khrapchynskyi.
As Russia prepares for a scenario in which Ukraine could counter KAB aerial bombs more effectively, especially with the arrival of additional F-16 fighter jets, it is constantly trying to modernize its tactics, Khrapchynskyi said.
“The enemy sees the possibility to use Shaheds on the front line as a replacement for KAB strikes,” Khrapchynskyi told the Kyiv Independent, stressing that it doesn’t mean Russia is facing a KAB bomb shortage.
Unlike attack drones that are launched from ground-based mobile launchers, Russian troops drop KAB bombs from Soviet-era fighter jets. The destructive power makes them effective weapons, allowing them to obliterate Ukrainian trenches, dugouts, or buildings used as positions, even if they are not inherently precise.
Although Shahed-type drones are equipped with only about 90 kilograms of explosives, compared to 200-500 kilograms carried by KAB bombs, their precision can help Moscow achieve similar results, according to Khrapchynskyi.
Iranian-designed Shahed drones come in two main versions: the smaller Shahed-131 and the larger Shahed-136. After initially importing them from Iran in 2022, Russia now mainly uses domestically produced analog versions called Geran-1 and Geran-2 — though in conversation, Ukrainians still refer to them as “Shaheds.”
Gerans are produced at a dedicated factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in the Republic of Tatarstan, and Russia has been continuously improving their guidance system and resistance to electronic warfare. They also produce smaller decoy drones called Gerberas.
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Russia’s “unprecedented” violation of Poland’s airspace earlier this week made one thing very clear — it’s not just Ukraine that needs to be concerned about Moscow’s long-range attack drones anymore. At least 19 Russian drones entered Polish airspace overnight on Sept. 10, prompting what was the first case of NATO directly engaging Russian military assets during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For most people outside of Ukraine, their frame of reference for a drone is a typical quadcopter,
Each Geran drone is estimated to cost between $20,000 and $50,000, while a KAB bomb should cost roughly $25,000.
But it is unlikely that Russian troops would suddenly switch to just using Gerans on the front, since they seek to make it as difficult as possible for Ukrainian forces to hold onto their positions, and KABs are still effectively doing the job, Khrapchynskyi said.
'A serious problem'
Some Ukrainian soldiers deployed on different sectors of the 1,200-kilometer-long front line told the Kyiv Independent they are facing an increasing number of Geran strikes, which are more common in the rear, targeting cities hundreds of kilometers away from the front.
Maks Hrabovskyi, a drone operator with the 109th Territorial Defense Brigade, said that Russian troops were striking Ukrainian positions “very actively with Geran drones a month ago on the front near Kostiantynivka in the eastern Donetsk Oblast, though the intensity has decreased since then. The drones would target homes in contested villages that Ukrainian soldiers were using as positions, demolishing basements, he explained.
The drone operator, who goes by his callsign “Artist,” said the Gerans would destroy all the houses street by street, regardless of whether Ukrainian troops were hiding inside.
Hrabovskyi said that the Russian Geran drones were likely recording where they hit on camera, as their backlight would usually flash just before they reached their targets.
Illia, a soldier from an air defense unit with the 80th Airborne Brigade deployed on the northeastern Sumy front, said he has also seen a rise in the Geran drone strikes closer to the battlefield, rather than just on a nearby front-line city, mostly at night. Like a few other soldiers interviewed by the Kyiv Independent, he asked that his full name not be disclosed so he could speak with the press without authorization from his command.
The Geran drones would typically target Ukrainian logistics or positions where troops or equipment gather, approximately 10-15 kilometers from the front, according to Illia. He said that Russian troops had previously used ballistic missiles or other drones that have a shorter range and carry less explosives, such as first-person view (FPV) aircraft-type drones called Molniya and other FPVs.
A reconnaissance soldier who goes by his call sign “Zalim” said that in his sector, Russian forces use Shahed-type drones (Gerans) and Molniya drones, first-person-view (FPV) aircraft-type models, to attack Ukrainian positions on the second and third lines of defense, often targeting Ukrainian drone pilots and electronic warfare sites, he added.
While soldiers’ accounts of Shahed-type drone usage on the front vary, Roman Pohorilyi, a co-founder of the open-source mapping project DeepState Map who communicates daily with various Ukrainian military units, stressed that Russian troops have used them on the front for quite some time.
Ruslan Gorbenko, a lawmaker from the ruling Servant of the People who regularly travels to the war-torn east, said that the rising number of Shahed-type drones on the front could be “a serious problem” since it could further help Russian troops demolish fortified Ukrainian positions.
But with Russia having used similarly “kamikaze” style Lancet strike drones since 2022, Gorbenko said he doesn’t expect the front to change significantly.
Khrapchynskyi said that while he believes Ukraine has the capability to tackle the rising number of Gerans on the front, including with interceptor drones, he worries Ukraine’s “strategic mistakes,” such as delayed implementation, may get in the way.
“Here we need to take an example from the enemy, who, for example, has found some effective tools, launches its production as quickly as possible, starts implementing them, and then deals with everything else later,” Khrapchynskyi said.
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