Russia has launched a string of massive daylight drone and missile barrages against Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, with strikes landing on Kharkiv, Sumy, Kherson, Dnipro, and the Kyiv region during working hours. For years, Moscow mostly relied on night attacks. Why the change?
For a start, Russia has bolstered its drone and missile production. Recent barrages have involved close to 500 aerial weapons in a single wave. That volume allows the Kremlin to experiment with timing in ways it found difficult before. Ukrainian military observers describe a strategy of the protracted strike, in which Russia stretches an assault across many hours and probes for seams in Ukraine’s layered defenses. Moscow still struggles with launcher availability, which caps the ceiling of any single salvo, though the stockpile of one-way drones has grown enough to sustain longer operations.
On top of that, Ukrainian air defense crews bear most of the overnight workload, and by sunrise, many units are tired with their interceptor stocks drawn down and radars requiring maintenance. A daylight wave arriving on the heels of a night barrage adds pressure to an already exhausted system. It’s a deliberate attempt to overwhelm air defenses before they can recover. Russia is also cycling through new drone approach paths, decoys, and mixed missile attacks to keep Ukrainian operators on alert 24/7.
The new approach is also designed to mitigate Ukrainian defensive action. Consider that Ukraine’s low-cost defense against Shahed drones rests on mobile interceptor teams that fly their own interceptor drones manually, guided by thermal cameras. Those cameras work superbly at night and falter in daylight, when the sun itself can damage thermal sensors. Ukraine is still holding with interception rates climbing from the 50%-60% range in early 2025 to 92% in March. And yet each daylight barrage is another stress on the critical air defense.
When sirens sound during working hours, the country comes to a halt as businesses stop their work, public transport shuts down, and government offices, schools, and shops close their doors. Some alerts stretch on for hours, and each one drains the workday and pushes additional costs onto an already battered economy and people. The Kremlin appears to be betting that sustained daylight pressure will erode civilian morale even more, instill a continued sense of terror, and increase casualties, keeping the population in a state of constant fear and, as a result, undermining the will to resist.
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But Russia has its own problem.
Namely, that it is failing to gain territory on the ground, with Ukraine even retaking some Russian-occupied territory in March and April. The shift to round-the-clock bombardment indicates how Russia is searching for fresh ways to subjugate Ukraine as its battlefield options narrow.