Zelenskyy says Russia intends to "exhaust" Ukraine with a drone air assault.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia intends to "exhaust" Ukraine into submission through a protracted campaign of drone attacks and aerial bombardments.

Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine had received information that Russia would step up its campaign of drone assaults on the country in his nightly address to the nation on Monday.

According to the president of Ukraine, Ukrainian military knocked down more than 80 Russian drones in the first two days of 2023.

Zelenskyy stated, "We have information that Russia is preparing a long-term attack employing Shahed drones.

It's presumably counting on fatigue. consuming all of our energy, people, and anti-aircraft defenses," he stated.

According to him, Ukraine must "act and do everything to ensure that the terrorists fail in their purpose, as all of their previous attempts have failed."

Following Russian missile and drone assaults that rocked Kyiv and other locations on New Year's Eve and early on New Year's Day, killing at least five people and injuring others, key infrastructure in Kyiv and the surrounding areas was targeted early on Monday.

In just the first two days of 2023, Zelenskyy claimed that Ukrainian forces had shot dozens of drones, and he predicted that the number would soon rise.

"Only two days have elapsed since the year began… "Over 80 drones have already been shot down over Ukraine," he claimed.

"This number could rise in the near future."

The Russian military is increasingly utilizing so-called kamikaze drones, which are armed with explosives that descend vertically and quickly on their target at the conclusion of their flight route, causing significant damage and casualties.

The Russian drone war plan has been to launch a large number of the unmanned projectiles at a specific target and overload Ukraine's air surveillance and defense systems, despite the Iranian Shahed drones' relatively slow movement and ease of target for the country's air defenses.

Before admitting in November that it had delivered a "small quantity" of the aerial explosives to Moscow, Iran had insisted that Russian forces already possessed the drones before the invasion of Ukraine had started. Prior to that, Iran had denied giving Russia drones for use in the conflict in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has refuted Tehran's claims that it supplied drones to Russia, claiming that the quantity of Shaheds that were shot down much outweighed what Iran claimed it had given to Moscow.

In a third straight night of air strikes against civilian targets in Kyiv and other cities, Russia had fired 39 drones, according to Ukrainian military sources, which Ukraine effectively shot down. The officials claimed that their achievement demonstrated how increasingly ineffective Russia's strategy of pouring down missiles and drones to destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure in recent months has become as Kyiv has strengthened its air defenses more than ten months after Russian soldiers invaded.

Even still, Ukraine's employment of missiles and other weapons to stop such airborne attacks is much more expensive than Russia's relatively inexpensive drones.