Ukraine will increase the number of attacks on military facilities on Russian territory

Umerov emphasized that Ukraine has been working for three years to create an effective model for countering the "Shaheeds".

Umerov added that now the enemy has increased combined strikes and is using up to 500 shaheeds per night, combined with ballistic and cruise missiles. According to him, this is done in order to exhaust our air defense, calculate our echelon, and for psychological pressure.

Despite this, Ukraine is finding solutions and adapting its defense. And an anti-Shahed solution already exists — one of these products has shown great effectiveness, we didn't even expect it ourselves.

Rustem Umerov

Minister of Defense of Ukraine

The minister said that solutions that were highly effective at the beginning of the war lost their effectiveness over time as the enemy changed tactics. According to him, in particular, MVGs (mobile fire groups — UNIAN) were useful for a certain period, but now their effectiveness is starting to decline.

He emphasized that Ukraine is introducing new developments — "interceptor drones", as well as other tools that are deliberately not disclosed.

Umerov noted that last year Ukraine developed a plan for systemic long-range operations and contracted several tens of thousands of long-range drones (deepstrike), which allowed it to regularly carry out high-precision strikes on critical targets deep inside the enemy.

All drone deliveries are on schedule, and operations are being carried out daily according to approved plans. About two weeks ago, a decision was made to increase the number of operations several times, and preparations are already underway to contract tens of thousands of new long-range drones to increase the intensity and scale of strikes.

Umerov said that today Ukrainian manufacturers have reached a level that allows them to produce over 4 million drones per year. According to him, as of today, the front has already received up to 1.5 million drones — these are all purchases, both by the AOZ (Defense Procurement Agency — ed.), and the DSSZZI (State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine — ed.), and directly by the brigades.

He recalled that last year we had many requests from brigades to provide them with direct funding.

Today, every month we allocate 2.5 billion UAH to brigades to purchase directly. Now, with our finance department, we are analyzing and seeing that not all brigades are spending these funds. Therefore, now the AOZ is introducing DOT Chain Defence — it will work simply. Brigades see a "marketplace" of drones — each brigade orders what it needs, and the AOZ pays for it. This way, we significantly reduce all bureaucracy, and brigades get what they need ten times faster.