Russia and Ukraine are locked in an escalating war of long-range strikes with a growing risk to civilians in which neither side can entirely prevail, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s defence technology adviser. Serhii Beskrestnov, widely known by his call sign, Flash, said he was worried about the prospects for Kyiv this winter, and suggested elderly people should be evacuated in case Russian bombing were to knock out the capital’s energy supply. However, the rapid wartime evolution also gave Ukraine the means to strike back, with plans to launch 1,000 drones a night to strike economic and military targets in Russia and halt its commercial air traffic, he said.
We proposed to Russia to stop this war, but Russia does not want to stop,” he said. Beskrestnov, 51, a radio specialist, was first appointed by the former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov as a technology adviser in January, before being taken on directly in July, after the latter’s dismissal. The adviser, who survived a drone attack on his home in April, agreed that “attack had become more powerful than defence”, because both sides’ air defences could not keep up with the number of missiles and drones available.
Russia could engage in a sustained bombing of electricity, water and heating systems in Kyiv this winter with the high-speed ballistic missiles it was producing at a rate of more than 100 a month, Beskrestnov said. Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin said Russia’s military had been “ordered to prepare and carry out mass strikes” on Ukraine’s energy facilities, showing no sign of halting the war. Ukraine is desperately short of US Patriot air defence interceptors, the main weapon capable of halting ballistic missiles, and Beskrestnov said he was “not sure” that Zelenskyy could obtain enough from abroad to prevent a crisis.
Last month, the president said he wanted to secure 300 Patriot interceptors for the winter. Beskrestnov predicted Ukraine would “attack Russia more and more with deep strikes”, continuing a campaign that has resulted in factories, warehouses and oil refineries being bombed. Addressing Zelenskyy’s announcement this week that there would be a sustained attempt by Ukraine to halt civil aviation inside Russia with the drones, Beskrestnov said: “I think it’s very simple: it’s not necessary for us to attack an airport, it’s just enough for us to fly at the airport and the airport will be closed.” Russia has also made a series of advances that have boosted its attack potential, including its first suspected use of artificial intelligence.
Ukrainian investigators concluded that a simple Molniya drone that killed a person near a Zaporizhzhia gas station in July was being guided not by radio but by AI. It could render Ukraine’s “huge jamming network” obsolete without any radio communication to jam. Beskrestnov said Ukraine was working on its own autonomous drones – “We have a prototype” – but that he believed Russia appeared to have more scale right now.
Russia has also developed a new wave of drones and missiles powered by Chinese-made jet engines that can fly at more than 200mph (320km/h), faster than the first generation of cheap Shahed interceptors that Ukraine has developed. Moscow fired 2,500 jet-powered Shahed drones into Ukraine in August, up from 1,500 in July, and was planning to make “about 36,000 in 2027”, Beskrestnov said. It also planned to build another 30,000 of the slower piston-engine type next year.
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