Ukraine needs to triple UAV strikes on Russia to match enemy impact - aviation expert

Aviation expert, member of the Public Council at the State Aviation Administration Bohdan Dolintse told Espreso.

"If we are talking about the Liutyi drones, in general, in terms of combat capability and range, they demonstrate no worse performance than the Russian Shahed UAVs. The Ukrainian Liutyi UAVs have even better hit rates. The second important factor in comparing these drones is the number of uses. In this aspect, unfortunately, Russia is currently outperforming us. After all, Russia launches more than 5,000 UAVs on the territory of Ukraine every month," explained Dolintse.

The expert noted that although the number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian UAVs is less, the effectiveness of the damage remains high.

"As for the number of attacks by Ukrainian UAVs coming from Russia, this information is at least twice as low. This is a key factor today. The number of strikes by the Ukrainian Defense Forces on Russian territory is somewhat lower, but the effectiveness of these attacks is quite significant. 

However, we understand that there are several times more military-industrial complexes and infrastructure in Russia than in Ukraine. Therefore, in order to have a commensurate effect of medium and deep strikes, we need to increase the number of UAV launches at least threefold," he added.

• On the night of July 19, the occupying Russian army used 379 air assets to attack Ukraine. Ukrainian air defenders shot down 185 drones and 32 Russian missiles.