For much of two days, Kyiv did not get the all-clear. Ukrainian officials say air-raid alerts sounded almost continuously from midnight on August 27 until midday on August 29 — roughly 28 hours — as Russia rolled wave after wave of drones and missiles at the capital region.

The barrage turned lethal on August 29, when a strike touched off secondary explosions and a large fire at a storage site on the western edge of Kyiv. At least 37 people were killed and more than 40 injured, including children, according to CNN and Ukrainian officials, with figures still being revised as rescuers worked the rubble. It was among the deadliest single attacks Kyiv has endured in more than four years of war.

A barrage designed to wear the defences down

Analysts read the unusual length of the assault as deliberate. Rather than one sharp salvo, Russia stretched the attack across more than a day — the kind of sustained pressure meant to tire crews, thin out interceptors and force air defenders to spend expensive missiles on cheap drones.

The main weapon in these long barrages is the Shahed-136, the Iranian-designed one-way attack drone that Russia builds domestically as the Geran-2. Individually slow and loud, they are dangerous in numbers, precisely because knocking each one down can cost far more than the drone itself.

How Ukraine fights back — and the cost problem

Ukraine now runs a layered defence against the drones: mobile fire teams with heavy machine guns and shoulder-launched missiles, electronic jamming, gun systems like the Gepard, and, increasingly, small interceptor drones that chase the Shaheds down in the air.

That last layer is reshaping the economics. Ukrainian interceptor drones reportedly cost somewhere between roughly €1,000 and €4,000 apiece — against a Shahed that runs an estimated €25,000 to €40,000, and far below the millions a single Patriot missile costs. Earlier in 2026, Ukrainian officials said interceptor drones were bringing down the majority of Shahed-type drones in the Kyiv area.

Nights like August 28 and 29 are the reason that arithmetic matters. When the attacker can send drones for the price of the defender’s missiles, endurance becomes the weapon — and cheaper interceptors are how Ukraine is trying to change the equation.

BBC News on Ukraine’s low-cost “Bullet” interceptor drone.

Sources: CNN; Al Jazeera; Kyiv Independent; Bloomberg; Institute for the Study of War; Breaking Defense; Euronews.