The fire at a shopping mall in Sumy is not an isolated incident — it is the result of a tactic that both Russia and Ukraine are employing with increasing frequency: launching large numbers of cheap drones targeting civilian and economic infrastructure to inflict material damage while depleting the opponent's air defense systems. In Sumy, rescue workers had to stop firefighting while drones were still circling overhead, demonstrating that drones themselves have become a tool obstructing rescue operations, not merely a one-time attack weapon.
Each drone costing several thousand dollars can force the opponent to fire an interceptor missile worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The mechanism: saturating air defenses through sheer numbers
Sumy sits near the Russian border and is among the most heavily targeted areas. According to data released by Ukraine's Ministry of Defense earlier this year, the region has endured more than 12,000 strikes from missiles, guided bombs, and various types of drones since the beginning of 2026, resulting in 122 civilian deaths and over 1,200 injured. Since June, Russia is believed to have shifted toward using more Molniya-type drones and first-person view (FPV) drones equipped with fiber optic cables — weapons that are cheap and difficult to jam electronically, yet force Ukraine to expend expensive air defense missiles to intercept them. This is the core economic calculation of modern drone warfare: each drone costing several thousand dollars can force the opponent to fire an interceptor missile worth tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Russia is paying a similar price
The saturation strategy does not operate in only one direction. Ukraine has struck back with long-range drone attacks targeting Russia's energy infrastructure. According to Kyiv Independent, Ukraine has attacked the Moscow oil refinery in Kapotnya district — a facility supplying roughly 40% of fuel to the Moscow region — and this was the second time in a week the facility was targeted. Another shopping mall in Moscow, Sadovod, also caught fire in a similar strike; Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed there were no casualties and attributed the fire to debris from a downed Ukrainian drone. He also stated that the city's air defense forces intercepted at least 194 drones approaching Moscow during that strike.
Who suffers the most, and what to watch
The most direct and immediate victims remain civilians on both sides — those living near shopping malls, residential areas, or oil refineries that become secondary targets. On a larger scale, strikes on oil and gas infrastructure risk creating a cascading effect on Russia's domestic fuel supply chain, evidenced by hundreds of flights being canceled or delayed at Moscow's major airports following an attack. A British official quoted by the BBC called the strike on the oil depot the incident with the most serious consequences that night, showing that energy facilities — not just residential areas — are becoming the main front. What bears watching next is whether the frequency and scale of drone attacks will continue to escalate as both sides realize that the cost of producing drones is far cheaper than the cost of defending against them — an asymmetry that could prolong this war of attrition for many more years, regardless of developments at the negotiation table.