Ukraine downs two Russian fighter jets with Magura-7 naval drones. The year 2024 was the deadliest for Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a BBC report finds. Russian drones increasingly hit targets throughout April.
Ukraine downs two Russian fighter jets with Magura-7 naval drones
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) shot down two Su-30 Flanker multirole fighters with AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared-guided air-to-air missiles fired by Magura-7 drone boats, the head of the agency told The War Zone exclusively. The paragraphs below are quoted from the article.
This marks the first time fighter aircraft have been downed by drone boats and the first use of the AIM-9 from a drone boat for a kill.
“It’s a historical moment,” Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told us [The War Zone].
The incident took place in the Black Sea on Friday, said Budanov, who offered new details about what happened.
GUR used three Magura-7 drone boats in the attack, with two of them firing on the jets, according to Budanov.
Budanov said that the crew of the first Su-30 survived and was picked up in the Black Sea by a civilian ship. Preliminary reports say the crew of the second jet was killed, he added.
GUR began installing AIM-9s on drone boats in January, Budanov said. He would not comment on whether this was the first time they had been fired at a target from a USV. In the past, we have only seen Soviet-designed air-to-air missiles used as SAMs mounted on Ukrainian drone boats.
“We use a couple of models [of missiles] on our Magura-7, but the best results [come from] the AIM-9,” he noted.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Saturday that the fighter jet had been shot down by a military intelligence unit called Group 13 on Friday over waters near the port of Novorossiysk where Russia keeps remnants of its Black Sea fleet.
In a nightly address on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said Ukraine’s military had shot down a second Russian fighter jet in a day using a seaborne drone.
Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed in December last year it destroyed two Russian helicopters for the first time in the world using the seaborne Magura V5 missile drone.
2024 was deadliest for Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, BBC report finds
Last year was the deadliest for Russian forces since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine: at least 45,287 people were killed. The BBC Russian Service, in collaboration with media outlet Mediazona and a team of volunteers, has processed open source data from Russian cemeteries, military memorials and obituaries. The paragraphs below are quoted from the report.
At the start of the war, losses happened in waves during battles for key locations, but 2024 saw a month-on-month increase in the death toll as the front line slowly edged forward, enabling us to estimate that Russia lost at least 27 lives for every square kilometre of Ukrainian territory captured.
This is almost three times more than in the first year of the invasion and significantly exceeds the losses of 2023, when the longest and deadliest battle of the war was taking place in Bakhmut.
So far, we have identified the names of 106,745 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Of these, 17,754 were contract soldiers, 16,745 were convicts, 26,618 volunteered to fight and 12,058 were mobilized.
The true number is clearly much higher. Military experts estimate our number may cover between 45% and 65% of deaths, which would mean 164,223 to 237,211 people.
Russia has lost 958,070 soldiers killed or wounded since the invasion, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on May 5.
Russian forces managed to capture around 68 square miles of Ukraine in April, a Forbes piece by David Axe said on May 1. At the current rate of advance and loss, it would take Russia centuries and tens of millions of casualties to capture all of Ukraine.
Russian drones increasingly hit targets throughout April
There were days in April when Russia did not launch major drone attacks on Ukraine, Ukrainian news outlet Novynarnya said on May 1 having analyzed daily updates from the Ukrainian Air Force. This marks the first time in 2025 that Russia did not send attack drones into the country.
Russia did not use Shahed drones on April 7 and April 20 when Putin declared an “Easter ceasefire”. On April 1, it fired two Kh-59/69 missiles, but did not launch any attack drones into Ukraine.
In February, Russia used a total of 2,476 drones, including decoys, against Ukraine. That’s 1,722 drones less than in March when it launched 4,198 of them at Ukraine, Novynarnya assessed.
Russia uses an average 91.7 drones in an attack. It reached 139 drones in February and slightly declined to 135 in March. Russia decreased the intensity of drone strikes in April.
Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 1,198 drones throughout April. They took down 2,435 drones in March, 2,209 in February and 1,598 in January. An average 44.4 drones were destroyed in a single attack in April, a decrease from 78.5 in March and 79 in February.
Some 900 decoy drones went off radar in April after being disabled by electronic warfare systems. Russia squeezes the use of decoys after it deployed 1,386 such drones in March and 1,593 in February.
In April, 378 Russian drones, including Shaheds and Gerans, hit targets. The figure has almost not changed since March when 377 drones hit targets, but marks a sharp increase since February when 105 drones reached targets.
While Russia uses less drones in major attacks, more drones now hit targets, Novynarnya said.
An average four drones a day hit targets in February, 12 in March and 14 in April.
One-in-six or one-in-seven drones hit targets. On April 10, Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 85 drones, the highest number that month.
On April 13, Ukraine shot down all 43 attack drones, other 12 decoy drones were lost. Similarly, it shot down all attack drones over three days in March.
At the same time, 52 strike drones were not destroyed in an attack on April 28.
Ukrinform explains why more drones have been recently hitting targets. Russia has changed its drone tactics. Instead of launching drones across the country, it now focuses the attacks on particular cities, using swarms of drones to simultaneously strike targets. This further complicates the work of overwhelmed air defenses. The tactics result in a larger scale of destruction and a higher number of drone hits.
Recent drone strikes on Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kropyvnytskyi, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and on well-protected Kyiv show that the tactics yields results.
Ukrinform detailed swarm tactics. Drones fly at different altitudes with some staying low and others rising high, making it difficult to detect and destroy them.
During an overnight attack on Odesa on March 21, the drones maneuvered over the sea, then simultaneously rose to an altitude of more than two kilometers and rapidly crashed into targets, reaching speeds of up to 80-90 meters per second. Their trajectory made it “nearly impossible” to shoot them down from the ground, Ukrinform said. At the same time the strike accuracy largely decreased, but Russia’s aim was not precision strikes, but the tactics of terror.
Describing the attack on Odesa, Ukrinform said the drones gathered into a swarm over the sea at an altitude of around 2,000 meters. They moved in groups of six to eight drones and struck the target in turn with a two-minute interval between the strikes. After that more than 10 drones would hit the target simultaneously, with three more approaching it in waves with a two-minute interval. Later the drones flying at a distance of three to five kilometers off the shore would abruptly change the flight altitude from 500 meters to 2,500 meters. They would rapidly crash into targets, accelerating the speed to 300 kilometers per hour. Ukrainian air defenses had very little time to respond to such maneuvers, and efficiency in intercepting aerial threats decreased.
Mobile air defense units equipped with DShK and M2 Browning machine guns and small arms are unable to reach Shahed drones flying at an altitude of 2-2.5 kilometers. It further underscores the need for new air defense solutions, Ukrinform said.
