Five people in winter coats and knitted hats, seen from behind, wait beside a glass bus shelter on a frosty pavement on a wide street before sunrise, the streetlamps along it unlit, one person holding a faintly glowing phone, with tall concrete apartment blocks, a few windows lit, dark under a deep blue sky.

The Strike

Russia Sends 317 Drones; Kyiv Plans for Its Bridges

Ukraine’s Air Force counted 317 drones overnight, nearly twice the night before, 105 of them jets; Kyiv is planning buses for metro failures or trouble on its bridges.

KYIV, Ukraine, Nov. 9 — Russia sent 317 drones at Ukraine overnight into Monday, nearly twice the 164 of the night before, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Fewer of them were jets: 105, about a third of the total, against 112 into Sunday, when jets made up more than two-thirds, as this paper reported.The CountThe Air Force counts each night from 6 p.m. Kyiv time. Its summary gives the 317 as Shahed-type drones and lists Banderol/Dan-T, Gerbera and decoy drones after them, without saying how many of each. Its figures are preliminary and not independently verified.

By 8 a.m. Kyiv time, the Air Force counted 271 of the drones shot down or suppressed, 81 of them jets, plus five Banderol/Dan-T drones; several were still in the air. It reported hits at 31 locations and listed no missiles.

By this paper’s arithmetic, 24 jets had not been reported shot down or suppressed by 8 a.m., the same number as on Sunday morning. The jets shot down or suppressed made up 77 percent of those sent, against 79 percent a day earlier.

Jet drones came at Kyiv in daylight on Monday, and preliminary information indicated that debris had fallen on the grounds of a school, the city’s military administration said. It declared an alert over a drone threat at 9:58 a.m. Kyiv time, 2:58 a.m. in New York, and soon reported a fire at a parking lot. During a second alert, from 11:29 a.m., the Air Force reported jets headed into the city, one toward its center, and the administration reported, on preliminary information, the debris at the school, in the Desnianskyi district. It had not given a casualty count by the 11:49 a.m. all-clear; it had said information on damage and casualties was being established.

Ukrenergo, the national grid operator, said there were outages on Monday morning in 12 regions, and that because of significant damage the situation was hardest in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions. In Sumy, it said, Russians attacked a car carrying its engineers with an FPV drone that morning, wounding three, one seriously.

On Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote that more than 600,000 customers in the Dnipropetrovsk region had been without power at the peak. Senior officials had presented him options for backup transport schemes for the capital, he said. He wrote that the government should prepare to keep Kyiv’s city ground transport running “in the event of metro failures or problems with the bridges over the Dnipro,” and told the prime minister to present a free-fare program and a sufficient reserve of buses. Translations here are this paper’s.

For anyone following the money, officials point to two places: the grid, and the weapons that stop jets. On Monday, after a call with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, Mr. Zelensky said the European Union would apply a special emergency-assistance mechanism to get Ukraine money quickly. “The challenge now is jet-powered drones, which require different interception speeds,” the defense minister, Yevhenii Khmara, said last month, in Ukrinform’s English account; he said Ukraine was scaling up the interceptor drones and gun turrets that had worked against them.The BarsMr. Zelensky has said the Bars interceptor drone, which Ukraine produces jointly with Germany, had the highest interception rate against jet drones, Ukrinform reported.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses destroyed 430 Ukrainian drones overnight, over 13 Russian oblasts, including Leningrad and Pskov, as well as the Moscow region and occupied Crimea. That is its claim, not independently verified.

Sources

  1. Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Night into Nov. 9: 317 Shahed-type drones, 105 jets; 271 downed or suppressed, 81 of them jets, and five Banderol/Dan-T; hits at 31 locations (post 94425),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  2. Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Kyiv: a jet drone toward the city from the west (post 94453),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  3. Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Kyiv: jet drones toward Troieshchyna (post 94468),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  4. Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Kyiv: a jet drone toward the center (post 94469),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  5. Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Night into Nov. 8: three Kh-59/69 missiles and 164 drones, 112 jets; 137 drones downed or suppressed, 88 of them jets (post 94139),” Nov. 8, 2026.
  6. Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Air-raid alert over a drone threat (post 22524),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  7. Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Fire at a parking lot in the Solomianskyi district (post 22527),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  8. Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Debris in Sviatoshynskyi district; information on damage and casualties being established (post 22528),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  9. Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Second air-raid alert over a drone threat (post 22529),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  10. Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Debris on the grounds of a school in the Desnianskyi district (post 22530),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  11. Kyiv City Military Administration, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “All clear (post 22532),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  12. Ukrenergo, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Outages in 12 regions; hardest in Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions (post 5627),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  13. Ukrenergo, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “Three Ukrenergo workers wounded by an FPV drone in Sumy (post 5625),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  14. Volodymyr Zelensky, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “After a conference call: Dnipropetrovsk outages; backup transport for Kyiv (post 21734),” Nov. 8, 2026.
  15. Volodymyr Zelensky, on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “After a call with Ursula von der Leyen: an E.U. emergency-assistance mechanism (post 21737),” Nov. 9, 2026.
  16. Ukrinform, “Ukraine already has interceptor drones for jet-powered Shaheds, scaling up production – Khmara,” Oct. 11, 2026.
  17. Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, on Telegram (in Russian), “Claims 430 Ukrainian drones destroyed overnight (post 68876),” Nov. 9, 2026.