Ukraine has destroyed a record 76 Russian air-defense systems this month, and September is not over. The tally beats a record that had stood since July 2023 and reflects a systematic Ukrainian campaign to hunt down Russia's air defenses, opening the skies over occupied territory and inside Russia, the analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko said on Telegram.
Ukraine is methodically peeling apart Russia's layered air defense, and September has been its worst month yet: 76 systems destroyed, past the 73 lost in July 2023, by Kovalenko's count, with days still to go.
It is part of a campaign in which Ukrainian drones and special forces have hunted Russian radars and missile launchers across occupied territory and Crimea, and each one destroyed opens a corridor for the next strike.
The record falls with days to spare
Kovalenko credited Ukraine's Defense Forces' sustained hunt for Russian anti-air, which he said pays off twice: it clears the defenses that would otherwise stop Ukraine's strikes, making later attacks on occupied territory and on Russia itself more effective.
Each kill opens a corridor
Ukrainian drone and special-operations units have picked off Pantsir, Tor, Buk, and pieces of S-300 and S-400 systems across occupied territory and Crimea, sometimes several in a single night throughout 2026.
As Russia pulls its scarce long-range systems back to guard Moscow, fewer are left to cover occupied Ukraine, widening the openings for the next wave of Ukrainian strikes.
Russia cannot replace the losses
Over the full-scale war, Kovalenko said, Russia has lost more than 1,673 air-defense systems of every kind, from radars to surface-to-air missiles and self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.
That, he argued, is a level Moscow can no longer make good with a defense industry already stretched thin by the war.
"Such a quantity of equipment Russia will never be able to restore and compensate," he thinks.
He added that this means it would no longer be able to return to the pre-war level of closing the sky, neither technically nor technologically."
