Russia's once-rare turbojet drones with advanced parts now attack Ukraine by the thousands

New tallies from Kyiv show that Russia was able to bombard Ukraine with thousands of jet-powered attack drones — a rare weapon just a year-and-a-half ago — over the summer.

Col. Yuriy Ignat, the main spokesperson for Ukraine's air force, told national broadcaster TSN on Wednesday that the Kremlin has launched 7,700 turbojet drones into Ukraine so far.

The bulk of these appeared over the summer, surging from 350 jet-powered drones in June to 1,500 in July, before leaping to 2,850 in August, he said.

Russia has launched 1,900 of the faster, more advanced drones so far this month.

That means that at least half of all Russian long-range drone attacks, which include the Kremlin's versions of the Iranian-designed Shahed, consist of jet-powered systems.

"This suggests that the enemy is not stopping, that they are finding opportunities to purchase those jet engines, other components, and assemble them on the territory of Russia," Ignat said.

Jet-powered drones have posed a particularly acute problem for Ukraine's air defenses, with the country still scrambling to find cheap, mass-producible countermeasures.

A novelty in the war's earlier years, the drones drew wider attention at the start of 2025, when Ukrainian war observers began reporting increased sightings of Shahed drones equipped with jet engines.

Their surge in production this year indicates that Russia has greatly expanded access to vital components that Ukrainian intelligence has repeatedly said Moscow can only procure on the global market.

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Ukraine has said that the jet engines, in particular, are sourced from China. Kyiv has said it has also found critical electronic components in the drones, such as digital signal processors, clock generators, and transceivers, originating from US or European firms.

It's been a particular pain point for Ukraine, which has long warned that Russia's military production base has been able to evade international sanctions at a scale that allows it to mass-produce weapons with foreign parts.