(LONDON) — August saw an easing in the scale of Russia’s long-range strike campaign on Ukraine, according to data published by Ukraine’s air force and analyzed by ABC News, though Moscow continued to launch massed and deadly bombardments on Kyiv, other major cities and critical infrastructure targets.
Over the course of August, Russia launched 4,216 air attack vehicles — 4,060 attack or decoy drones and 156 missiles — at a daily average rate of nearly 131 drones and five missiles, Ukraine’s air force data showed. No night of August passed without a Russian attack, the Ukrainian government said.
The reason for the apparent drop off in the overall intensity of the attacks is unclear. Moscow has shown no sign of abandoning its maximalist demands in the ongoing peace talks. Meanwhile, Ukrainian long-range strikes have been targeting military industrial targets across Russia, including facilities involved in the production of drones and missiles.
Ukrainian forces said they shot down or suppressed just over 85% of the drones and nearly 68% of missiles launched by Russia during August.
The overall number of long-range Russian drones and missiles launched in August was around 34% less than in July, according to the Ukrainian air force’s figures.
But the month ended with a notable uptick in Russian activity. From Aug. 1 to 15 — the day of the summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska — Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched a total of 1,131 drones and 21 missiles, at a daily average of 75.4 drones and 1.4 missiles.
But from Aug. 16 to 31, the scale of attacks increased. In the second half of the month, Ukraine’s air force reported 3,001 Russian drones and 135 missiles at a daily average of 187.5 drones and 8.4 missiles.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine publish data on their own strike campaigns. Ukraine’s air force publishes a daily tally of Russian drone and missile strikes, while Russia’s Defense Ministry only publishes figures of Ukrainian drones it claims were shot down.
The overall number of Russian drones and missiles reported by Kyiv in August was the lowest monthly total since May. Still, three nights during August each saw more than 500 drones and missiles launched into the country, despite the comparatively smaller scale of month’s attacks.
The human toll continues to rise in Ukraine, despite Trump’s repeated appeals for Moscow to end long-range strikes — and despite his public frustration over Putin’s refusal to do so.
The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said that July marked the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since May 2022, with 286 people killed and 1,388 people injured. The mission said it verified casualties in 18 of the country’s 24 regions in July. The mission attributed nearly 40% of the casualties in July to “long-range weapons such as missiles and loitering munitions.”
The mission is yet to publish its data for August. But there were several high casualty events during the month, perhaps most notably the drone and missile barrage on Kyiv that killed at least 23 people on the night of Aug. 27-28.
The bombardment on the night of Aug. 20-21 also saw one person killed and more than a dozen more injured, while another large combined strike on the night of Aug.29-30 killed one person and injured at least 29 people.
In July, Russia set a new monthly record for the number of drones and missiles fired at Ukraine. The month saw Russia launch 6,443 aerial vehicles — 6,245 drones and 198 missiles — into the country, of which 89% of drones and around 61% of missiles were defeated, according to Ukrainian figures.
June saw 5,438 drones and 239 missiles fired into Ukraine, with a daily average of 181 drones and nearly eight missiles. The air force downed or suppressed 87.2% of all drones and 73% of missiles during June.
And in May, Russia launched a total of 3,835 drones and 117 missiles, for an average of around 124 drones and nearly four missiles each day. Across the month, 85.7% of drones and 57% of missiles were defeated.
Despite the nightly attacks, August saw two key diplomatic summits, intended as springboards to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor which began in February 2022.
First, Putin traveled to Alaska to meet with Trump — the first face-to-face meeting between Russian and American leaders since 2019.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accompanied by a host of European leaders, then traveled to the White House to discuss possible peace terms.
Trump framed both meetings as positive and encouraging. But subsequent developments have been lacking. Trump’s proposal for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy — an idea the Kremlin has repeatedly dodged since the two men last met in 2019 — has yet to come to fruition, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of continued evasion.
Data published by Russia’s Defense Ministry suggests that Ukraine maintained the level of its own drone strike campaign through August.
The ministry said its forces shot down 2,783 Ukrainian drones over the course of the month, at an average rate of nearly 90 per day.
Across July, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported downing 3,008 Ukrainian drones at an average of around 97 per day.
In June, the ministry reported downing a total of 2,368 Ukrainian drones, with an average of almost 79 drones per day across the month. Those figures were down from May, during which the ministry said it shot down 3,611 drones with an average of 116 per day.
Local governments in Russia often publicly state death tolls for specific attacks, although the Kremlin doesn’t release a regular country-wide tally, making it difficult to track over a period of time.
Last month, Rodion Miroshnik — a Foreign Ministry ambassador-at-large responsible for analyzing Ukrainian attacks in Russia — told the TASS state news agency that 15 people were killed and 140 injured during one week of attacks in August. The toll included casualties in frontline regions, as well as those deep inside Russia caused by long-range drone strikes.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Kyiv is planning “new strikes.”
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