Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The numbers climbing out of eastern Ukraine have been setting new highs almost by the day.
A drone war that began with hobbyist quadcopters and improvised payloads has turned into Ukraine’s single most prolific killer of Russian troops, and the past week has produced three successive daily records.
On November 8, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) said their drone operators struck 801 Russian service members in 24 hours, including 281 killed and 520 wounded, Militarnyi reported, citing the force’s own Telegram channel.
The previous ceiling, set on Nov. 5, was 751, with 708 hits on Nov. 1 marking the record before that.
The USF said its crews flew 5,217 strike sorties and 2,376 reconnaissance flights that day, hitting 2,611 Russian targets and destroying 959 of them.
What the strikes hit
The destroyed items, according to the same tally, included 153 vehicles and pieces of equipment, 39 ammunition depots, 77 drone launch sites, 719 shelters and dugouts, and 443 Russian drones of various types.
For the first eight days of November alone, USF units reported 17,903 Russian targets struck and 5,492 personnel hit. The figures are the Unmanned Systems Forces’ own count and have not been independently verified.
A record week for casualties
The surge has pushed Russia’s overall weekly toll to its highest of the war. Ukraine’s General Staff said that 16,130 Russian troops were killed or wounded between November 1 and 7, calling it “the most successful week for Ukrainian defenders since the start of the full-scale invasion.”
That pace works out to roughly 2,300 losses a day, or close to 100 an hour.
USF commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi tied the acceleration to the Russian side, not only to Ukrainian capabilities. “This points to an unprecedented buildup of enemy manpower at the front,” he said in remarks reported by Euromaidan Press.
On November 9, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence put the cumulative Russian personnel toll since February 24, 2022, at about 1,609,380, with a further 2,980 losses recorded for November 8 and another 1,843 drones added to the running total.
