Outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine | Nov. 09, 2026, 1:57 p.m. ET | 5 min read

Outside his base, Oleksii takes a break from defending the Ukrainian capital to eat an apple from his mother’s garden. From his unit’s vantage point along the Dnieper River, he can shoot down Russian drones that use the waterway as an approach corridor against the bridges that span its banks.

He is good at his job, as a makeshift trophy kept in a sack inside the base attests: the crumpled remains of a jet-engine drone. He brought it down with a clean shot. “It felt routine,” says Oleksii, who like many Ukrainian service members, only gave his first name and his call sign, Tourist. “I was happy I didn’t waste the rocket.”

Oleksii’s three-person unit within the Antiaircraft Battalion Separate Presidential Brigade, and those like his, face one of Ukraine’s most daunting challenges: how to sustainably defend cities against an expanding and ever-evolving Russian drone arsenal, employed alongside devastating missile strikes.…