With Kyiv’s air defense crews as they race to keep up with Russia’s jet-powered drones

The Kyiv Independent · 26.10.2026, 06:38:39

In a cornfield north of Kyiv, pieces of blackened metal are scattered among rows of dried stalks. They are all that remains of a Russian Geran attack drone, shot down by Ukrainian fighter jets as it flew toward the capital during one of Russia's mass aerial assaults. "Last year we had so many of them," says Halyna Prykhodko, deputy director of the Branytsia division of the agricultural company Zemlya i Volya. "We found three, four, even five in the fields." Above Prykhodko's land is one of the