Russia’s efforts to wear down Ukraine’s air defences and incapacitate its energy infrastructure with exploding drones are being met with increased ability by Ukraine to shoot down nearly all of the lumbering Iranian-made weapons.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said his military began the new year by putting up stiff resistance to the unmanned attacks from above.

“Only two days have passed since the beginning of the year, and the number of Iranian drones shot down over Ukraine is already more than 80,” Zelensky said late on Monday in his nightly address.

Russia launched another swarm of exploding drones, nicknamed “flying mopeds” for their relatively slow speed, at targets inside Ukraine on Monday. None got through, the Ukrainian Air Force said.

All 39 were shot down with anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles and warplanes, a rare shutout. Twenty drones were downed over Kyiv alone.

In October, about a month after Russia began deploying the Shahed drones, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister said that they were shooting down more than 70 per cent of the drones.

As winter sets in, the fighting on the ground in Ukraine has become a war of attrition, and the focus has shifted to the struggle in the air over Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other major cities.

Russia has launched wave after wave of drone and cruise missile attacks aimed at knocking out electricity and water supplies to civilians, leaving as much as 25 per cent of the nation without power at times.

Monday’s drone attack is the latest in a series of yearend assaults, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve.

In his nightly address on Monday, Zelensky said his government had intelligence suggesting that there was no end in sight to the Russian attacks using Shaheds.

“We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds,” he said, according to a transcript put out by his office.

“Its bet maybe on exhaustion — on exhaustion of our people, our air defence, our energy sector.” But, with each attack, Ukraine’s forces are getting better at taking out the drones before they hit their target, giving Ukraine what Zelensky called small “victories over terrorists and terror”.

“Each shot-down drone, each shot-down missile, each day with electricity for our people and minimal schedules of blackouts are exactly such victories,” he said.

One reason for the success of the drone campaign might be the US’s decision in early November to provide Ukraine with an advanced surface-to-air missile system, known as NASAMS.

New York Times News Service