Russian troops are shooting down between 50 and 70 Ukrainian drones a day on the Dnipropetrovsk direction of the front, according to Daniil Kazakov, a squad commander in Russia's 27th Guards Motorized Rifle Division. Kazakov made the comments in an interview with the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, published on September 14, 2026.
Kazakov said the units under his division's responsibility operate a layered system of aerial observation posts and FPV air-defense teams that strike different types of unmanned aerial vehicles. He said roughly 30 to 40 drones are brought down each day through this system alone.
He added that including the FPV air-defense posts raises the daily total further, by an additional 20 to 30 drones. Combined with the 30 to 40 destroyed by observation posts alone, that produces the overall 50-to-70 range he cited to RIA Novosti.
According to Kazakov, the drones being intercepted include reconnaissance and strike UAVs, hexacopters, and loitering munitions.
Hexacopters are six-rotor drones that can carry heavier payloads than standard quadcopters, while loitering munitions, sometimes called "kamikaze drones," are built to circle above a target before diving in and exploding on contact. FPV drones, short for "first-person view," transmit live video from an onboard camera to an operator's headset, letting the pilot steer the aircraft directly into a target. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used large numbers of FPV drones during the war.
Russia's Center Group of Forces
The 27th Guards Motorized Rifle Division is part of Russia's "Center" group of forces, one of several groupings the Russian military has assigned to different sections of the front in the conflict with Ukraine. Moscow calls the conflict its "special military operation"; it began in February 2022. The Dnipropetrovsk region lies in east-central Ukraine and borders the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, both of which have seen heavy fighting since the war began.
Supply Routes Near Vovchansk
The report on drone interceptions follows earlier statements that Russian drone operators had taken control of dirt roads used to supply Ukrainian forces near Vovchansk, a town in the Kharkiv region close to the Russian border that has been the site of prolonged, heavy fighting since Russian troops advanced into the area in 2024.
