Russia helpless to stop Ukraine drone attacks on Dnipro River: UK intel

• Russia appears to be unable to counter Ukrainian drone attacks from the east bank of the Dnipro River, the UK MOD said.
• This is likely because of a shortage of Russian electronic warfare capability in the area.
• Both Russia and Ukraine have increased their use of cheap, first-person view drones.

Russia appears to be unable to counter Ukraine’s drone attacks on the Dnipro River because of a shortage of electronic warfare capability in the area, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.

Ukraine’s forces on the east bank of the Dnipro River have been using first-person view drones loaded with munitions to strike Russian vehicles alongside artillery, the UK department said in an intelligence update on Sunday.

A Russian military blogger estimated that 90% of Russian military equipment in the Krynky sector, a village on the east bank of the river, has been destroyed, the department said.

The superiority in the air appears to be helping to sustain the fragile Ukrainian bridgehead amid reports that the situation is critical on the ground. Marines fighting in the swamps on the banks of the Dnipro have called it a “suicide mission.”

Recent reports have said that Russia has been forced to send tanks to retrieve numerous vehicles lost in Russian counterattacks around Krynky.

Russia and Ukraine have increased their use of cheap, commercially available first-person view drones this year and have been using tens of thousands of drones a month each, according to The Financial Times.

Analysts generally say Russia has the upper hand with electronic warfare technology that can jam and divert drones.

However, this does not appear to be the case in the area around the Dnipro River, the UK department noted.

In November, it was reported that Ukraine was focused on destroying Russia’s electronic warfare systems.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, told CNN: “We are not only scaling UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) production, we are scaling EW production too and generally changing the approach to the use of electronic warfare.”

At the beginning of 2024, Ukraine destroyed a new $250 million Russian artillery radar system right after the military touted its arrival.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s electronic warfare capabilities appear to be increasing and adapting to the Russian strikes, according to a recent update from the think tank the Institute for the Study of War.