Russia increases drone attacks in Ukraine by 44% since Trump’s election

Russia increased the intensity of its long-range drone attacks on Ukrainian cities by about 44% in the week following President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory, according to ABC News analysis.

The scale and complexity of drone attacks carried out by Russia and Ukraine have steadily increased since the start of the large-scale war in February 2022. Over the past five weeks, around 4,500 drones have crossed the common border in both directions.

But Trump’s election victory – confirmed in the early hours of November 6 – aligns with an increase in Moscow’s use of Shahed attack drones, produced in Iran, to bomb Ukrainian targets across the country.

The week after Trump’s victory saw Russia launch 641 attack drones into Ukraine, according to daily figures released by the Ukrainian Air Force, an average of more than 91 drones per day.

The Ukrainian Air Force recorded 2,286 launches on its territory between October 1 and November 5, a daily average of less than 64 drones.

The daily number of Russian drones has exceeded 100 three days a week since the US presidential election, with this threshold having been reached only five times in the previous five weeks. The record of 145 drones was set on November 10.

Russia also often launches ballistic missiles alongside its drone barrages, although to a lesser extent. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that 88 missiles were fired at the country between October 1 and November 5, and 12 in the week after the election. This meant a daily average of just over 2 Russian missiles before the election and just under 2 afterward.

The pace of Ukrainian drone attacks has been stable since the beginning of October, according to figures published in real time by the Russian Defense Ministry on its Telegram channels.

Moscow reported shooting down 1,277 drones between October 1 and November 5, an average of just over 35 drones per day. In the week after the election, Russian air defenses shot down 243 drones, the ministry said, for a daily average of just under 35 drones.

ABC News cannot independently verify the figures provided by either Department of Defense. Publicly available totals do not include short-range or reconnaissance drones used in frontline areas. Russia and Ukraine may have reasons to inflate the numbers, and war conditions make details difficult to confirm.

Nevertheless, the general trend is towards larger and more regular drone barrages.

“Over the next few months, until January 20, we expect a significant increase in the number of launches to Ukraine,” Ivan Stupak, a former Ukrainian security service officer, told ABC News.

Stupak said the number of Russian drone attacks has steadily increased in recent months. August saw 818 launches, 1,410 in September and 2,072 in October, he said. Moscow’s intention, Stupak suggested, is to cause as much damage to Ukraine as possible before the change of US administration.

The increasing pace of Russia’s long-range attacks is accompanied by an increased intensity of ground attacks, with ongoing heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine, in Russia’s Kursk region, west of the Russia – parts of which have been occupied by Kiev forces since August – and Ukrainian commanders preparing for a military offensive. expected offensive in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

Both sides have a two-month window of maneuver before Trump returns to the White House, after promising during the campaign to end the war “in 24 hours” by forcing kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table .

Russia is upping the ante “because it wants to put Ukraine in the most difficult situation before Trump’s inauguration,” Oleg Ignatov, senior Russia analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, told ABC News. “It is good that Russia is as strong as possible,” he added, while noting that “events on the ground have their own logic,” beyond purely political ones.

Ukraine will want to pursue its own long-range strikes, using its rapidly developing and large-scale drone arsenal. “Ukraine will continue to carry out these types of strikes as long as possible,” Stupak said. “First of all, Ukraine wants to destroy huge munitions depots, as well as refineries and oil installations.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was seeing “positive signals” following Trump’s victory, while adding that it was unclear “to what extent Trump would adhere to statements made during of his campaign.

Yet President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said any peace talks must be based on the “new territorial realities” of Russia’s partial occupation and has claimed full sovereignty over four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as continued control of Crimea, annexed in 2014.

The Kremlin also said it would not begin negotiations with Ukraine to end the war until Ukrainian troops were withdrawn from Kursk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented a five-point “victory plan” in October, which included demands for full NATO membership and more long-range Western weapons – as well as permission to use them on Russian territory – as the main deterrent measures.

Zelensky’s victory plan also included three “secret annexes” that were presented to foreign leaders but not made public.

ABC News’ Patrick Reevell and Natalia Popova contributed to this report.

Russia has increased its drone attacks in Ukraine by 44% since Trump’s election, originally published on abcnews.go.com