Ukraine drone chief says Crimea strikes could rise sevenfold with faster Western funding

Maj. Robert "Magyar" Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, says recent strikes on Crimea are the opening phase of a campaign to make the peninsula untenable as a Russian military staging ground. In an interview, he said his forces could hit seven times more targets there if Western allies disbursed pledged funds more quickly.

"Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war," Brovdi said. Despite funding shortfalls, Ukraine's summer campaign has already damaged rail bridges, oil depots, and power infrastructure, disrupting supply lines and blinding Russian air defenses.

Brovdi said his units are equipped at only 14% of what they need for full-capacity operations. He blamed the gap on slow financing, not production limits. "It's the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans," he said.

A former grain trader who volunteered in 2022, Brovdi now commands from an underground post that doubles as a museum, with Ukrainian art and QR-coded placards. Screens stream live front-line footage, and soldiers enjoy coffee, books, and sleeping pods—a culture closer to a tech office than a war room.

He cited progress: in four recent Russian missile barrages from Crimea, only five missiles were launched, a drop he attributes to the systematic destruction of air defenses. His forces have destroyed over 300 air defense assets, including radar and electronic warfare systems, opening a "window" for drones. Much of Russia's Soviet-era air defense runs on the grid, making Crimea's power infrastructure a target. Brovdi has twice apologized to civilians for resulting outages.

With Starlink connectivity, his forces can destroy heavily defended targets using an average of three drones, mixing munitions for specific targets while avoiding civilian infrastructure. "Creating conditions that make it impossible for any kind of military capability to remain there will make Crimea uninteresting as a military staging ground," he said.

Ukraine is also working to dismantle Crimea's role as a naval base. Brovdi said that about two weeks into the late-June offensive, intelligence indicated Russian authorities had ordered military commands to relocate off the peninsula, along with covert orders to remove archives and artworks—claims that could not be independently verified.

Russia is countering by installing jamming systems that may degrade Starlink and building its own satellite communications. "This is a risk for the entire planet, because a dictatorship will gain access to information across the whole globe," Brovdi warned.

He also noted a 2.5-fold increase in jet-powered Shahed drones and said Russia can currently fire 77 ballistic missiles in a salvo, planning to reach 200. Ukraine lacks interceptors for its Patriot systems, so many missiles get through. "Even if they only manage half of that, it will all be flying at us," he said, stressing the need to strike missile production facilities.

Ukraine has targeted Wildberries, Russia's largest online marketplace, which Brovdi called "the war's quartermaster" for its military goods section. The strikes aim to make ordinary Russians feel the war's impact. "It turned out to be a sensitive sensor of the comfort of Russia's massive population," he said, adding the campaign will continue "until it becomes impossible for it to recover quickly."