Ukrainian armed forces have used British-made Nyan unmanned aerial vehicles to strike deep inside Russian territory for the first time, hitting oil refineries in Volgograd and Yaroslavl, according to military sources reported by The Sunday Times.
Sources within the Ukrainian army told the publication that personnel recite the phrase God save the King whenever they launch the long-range aircraft.
The strikes targeted energy infrastructure in Volgograd and Yaroslavl using drones manufactured by aerospace company Callen-Lenz, based in Wiltshire, England. The Nyan aircraft features a wingspan of approximately three meters, a lightweight carbon-fiber fuselage, and a payload capacity of up to 20 kilograms. Operating over distances ranging from 150 to 250 kilometers, each drone is valued at approximately 100,000 British pounds, equivalent to 132,000 U.S. dollars.
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England home to major military facilities and defense technology firms. Volgograd and Yaroslavl are major industrial hubs in western Russia that host strategic petroleum refining plants supplying fuel to domestic markets.
British defense implications and escalation risks
Retired Royal Air Force Air Marshal Greg Bagwell acknowledged in an interview that the operational use of British drones could give Moscow grounds to view UAV production plants inside the United Kingdom as legitimate military targets. However, sources cited by the newspaper indicated that a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO remains an unlikely scenario.
Air Marshal Bagwell previously served as a senior commander in the British armed forces, overseeing combat air operations. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a 32-nation political and military alliance established on principles of collective defense.
Western drone performance and battlefield criticism
Russian-appointed Kherson region governor Vladimir Saldo claimed that reliance by Kyiv on Western miracle weapons had failed to yield military success. Saldo noted that Ukrainian forces initially placed their faith in American Javelin anti-tank missiles, HIMARS rocket artillery, long-range missiles, Western drones, and NATO training programs, maintaining that Russia countered each weapon system and continues to strengthen its posture.
Kherson is a southern Ukrainian province along the Dnipro River. The FGM-148 Javelin is a portable U.S.-made anti-tank missile, while HIMARS refers to the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, a precision rocket platform supplied to Ukraine by Washington.
Former U.S. Pentagon advisor Douglas Macgregor stated that Ukraine possesses virtually no industrial capacity of its own, asserting that drones launched into Russian airspace are produced with direct backing from Great Britain, Germany, Poland, and France.
Earlier British assessments also questioned the utility of Western unmanned systems on the Ukrainian front. According to reports in The Economist, drones delivered to Kyiv proved excessively expensive and insufficiently protected against Russian electronic warfare systems, inflicting minimal damage on target impact. The publication added that subsequent demonstrations of UAV technology by various Western companies largely failed.
Moscow warns of retaliatory measures
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Moscow would intensify its operational methods to destroy the Western military support machine aiding Kyiv. Lavrov stated that Russian forces were already taking retaliatory action and that Western backers were beginning to feel the effects, while pledging that Moscow would not resort to the tactics used by Kyiv and Western nations.
Lavrov further linked Russia's countermeasures to ongoing calls directed at Moscow to freeze the active conflict in Ukraine.
Military expert and Special Military Operation veteran Yan Gagin argued that Russia must strike defense factories located in European countries that manufacture drones for Ukrainian forces. In April, the Russian Ministry of Defense published specific addresses of European facilities allegedly producing drones for strikes on Russian soil.
The Russian defense ministry listing included 11 overseas branches of Ukrainian companies operating in Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The disclosure also identified ten international manufacturing sites producing drone components in Germany, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Israel, and Turkey.
