On 16 July, one-way attack drones from the Ukrainian state security service—the vaunted SBU—motored 800 km to strike Engels-2 air base in western Russia. At the time, there were reportedly five bombers on the ground at the base: four Tupolev Tu-22Ms and a single Tupolev Tu-95.

The drones struck the four-engine, propeller-driven Tu-95. "According to preliminary data, the plane suffered critical damage," the SBU claimed. "It completely tore off the tail part." That particular aircraft, the SBU added, had been used systematically to launch massed missile strikes on Ukraine. Satellite imagery later confirmed the bomber's destruction.

Nearly a month later, we finally know which drone type the SBU flung at Engels-2 and its parked bombers. They were MICH 2000s—Ukrainian aircraft that began as copies of the Chinese ZTK-150, built after Beijing stopped selling. Ukrainian website Oboronka, which visited the factory, broke the news. "Today, the Mich' is no longer just a Chinese plane, but a drone that is exclusively used by the SBU Special Operations Center 'Alpha.'"

According to Oboronka, whose report was agreed in advance with the manufacturer and the SBU, the MICH 2000 flies as far as 2,000 km with a warhead weighing 25 to 60 kg. "The list of targets hit by this drone is updated every week," Oboronka noted. They include Russian ports, military and industrial sites around Moscow and Engels-2.

The Engels-2 raid might be the most immediately impactful. After the 16 July raid, the Russians may be down to 43 Tu-95s, only a dozen of which are usually active at any given time.

The plane that came from China

The MICH 2000 started as someone else's drone. In the summer of 2023, Beijing restricted exports of the civilian aircraft Ukrainian units had been buying and converting into deep-strike munitions. At the end of that year, a team of Ukrainian developers flew to China to buy some anyway.

At the factory, they found dozens of ZTK-150s coming off the line—Shahed lookalikes distinguished mainly by a pair of forward canards. The Chinese intermediaries floated selling the production technology outright, and Ukrainian commanders liked the idea. But when the team came back ready to buy, the factory's management refused.

The intermediaries wanted the deal anyway. They offered to assemble the drones somewhere without export restrictions—and to train Ukrainian pilots. The team took the training. "We came there to teach pilots to fly Chinese drones," one member told Oboronka. "And in parallel with the training we photographed everything that was there. Everything from the production process to the arrangement of the shelves and cabinets." They flew home with trained pilots and eight Chinese drones.

Two years later, the Ukrainian version costs $48,000 in its basic configuration. The Chinese original costs $50,000. And according to the manufacturer, almost nothing of the Chinese drone survives in the MICH 2000 now except its outline.

Whittling down the bomber fleet

Ukrainian drones are slowly chipping away at the Tu-95 fleet. A 2022 drone raid badly damaged one of the lumbering turboprop bombers at Engels-2, potentially leaving no more than 51 intact Tu-95s in the Russian air force inventory at the time. Smuggling tiny explosive drones across Russia in trucks on 1 June, 2025, the SBU hit at least seven more Tu-95s as well as four Tu-22Ms, among other aircraft.

The 16 July raid is the more recent Ukrainian effort to shrink the Russian bomber force, but it surely won't be the last. The Russians' roughly 120 bombers—Tu-95s, Tu-22Ms and Tupolev Tu-160s—launch the cruise missiles that routinely blast Ukrainian cities and power plants.

Struggling to intercept all Russian deep strike munitions in the target zone, in part owing to a deepening shortage of the best air defense missiles, Ukrainian forces increasingly aim to prevent the Russian munitions from even launching—by smashing munitions factories or, yes, destroying irreplaceable bombers. Of the three Russian bomber types, just one—the Tu-160—is still in production, albeit at a rate of barely just one every year or two.

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Expect more MICH 2000 raids. The type's anonymous builder churns out 6,000 MICH 2000s a year but aims to boost output to 10,000 a year. And the firm customizes the drones to suit particular missions.

According to Oboronka, there are eight main versions. "Fighters can choose what kind of communication they need: analog, digital or Starlink. They can choose the warhead, the size of the fuel tank, the possibility of additional guidance." The navigation system can be made more jam-proof by adding additional jam-resistant controlled reception pattern antennas.

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Russia has figured out how to stop Ukraine’s most powerful missile

Drone strikes by MICH 2000s and other drone types aren't the only ways Ukrainian forces are trying to blunt Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and power plants. Ukrainian drone teams are also trying to take out the last five warships in the battered Russian Black Sea Fleet that can fire Kalibr cruise missiles.

On 11 August, drones struck at least three of the ships in the port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia. The frigates Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov and the corvette Bykov all suffered visible damage.

Russia has been shooting down most of Ukraine's best long-range cruise missiles as fast as Ukraine can launch them. Just one or two of the $500,000 Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo missiles have hit their targets in recent weeks.

That means Russian air defenses are working for now. Whether they'll continue to work is the critical question for Ukrainian strike planners.

Under the cover of darkness on 6 August, the Ukrainian army's 19th Missile Brigade launched at least three of the six-ton, jet-propelled Flamingos toward Tyumen Oblast in western Siberia. The missiles traveled around 2,500 km before disappearing, according to mapper AMK Mapping.

The apparent shoot-downs capped a difficult week for Ukraine's deep strike campaign. AMK Mapping claimed the Russians shot down 10 of 11 launched Flamingos since 1 July. That count is one mapper's, based on open-source tracking, and no official Ukrainian or Russian figures exist to check it against.

The mapper may be off by one. Between 24 and 25 July, at least one Flamingo struck the Vyatka Machine-Building Enterprise Avitek missile plant in Kirov Oblast 1,300 km from the border with Ukraine. Michael Bohnert, an analyst with the RAND think tank in California, concluded that two Flamingos hit the plant, causing visible damage.

It was a potentially powerful blow. Among other things, Avitek produces parts for the Tor medium-range surface-to-air missile system. Slowing Tor production "will have the most impact," Bohnert explained. And the Ukrainian system that a Tor slowdown might benefit the most is ... the Flamingo.

After all, the Tor is one of the air defense systems the Russians could use to shoot down Flamingos. "Any slow-down in the production of these could greatly improve the prospects of FP-5 performance over time," Bohnert noted.

Aerial defenses

At present, however, it seems that the Flamingo's biggest problem is in the air, not on the ground. Russia is shooting down most of the incoming FP-5s because it has eyes in the sky.

The Russian air force's fleet of lumbering Beriev A-50U radar early-warning planes now has one mission and one mission only: the A-50Us with their fuselage-mounted radars patrol over the likeliest flight paths for Flamingos motoring into the Russian interior to strike strategic industries.

The A-50Us are effective in the role. As recently as June, more Flamingos were getting through Russian defenses. Between 9 and 10 June, the 19th Missile Brigade launched five Flamingos at the VNIIR-Progress electronics plant in Cheboksary, in western Russia, 960 km from the Ukraine border.

Two missiles struck the plant, punching right through anti-drone protections and inflicting major blast and fire damage with their 1,150-kg warheads, the biggest on any Ukrainian deep strike munition.

Russia adapted fast. On 4 July, an A-50U helped missile batteries on the ground spot and shoot down five FP-5s flying toward Votkinsk, 1,360 km from Ukraine. From its perch thousands of feet in the air, the A-50U has a much longer detection range against low targets than any radar on the ground can manage.

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Targeting A-50Us on the ground and in the air in a series of drone and missile ambushes, the Ukrainians have destroyed two A-50Us and damaged at least two others, reducing the fleet to no more than five. Russia has no way to build replacements. But those five planes are now fully committed to the anti-Flamingo fight.

On 7 July, the Russians reportedly launched four of the irreplaceable planes at the same time in order to coordinate the Flamingo shoot-downs. Now, almost all Flamingos go down in flames before they reach their targets.

Ukraine isn't powerless. Fire Point has been working hard to improve the Flamingo and make it harder to shoot down. Perhaps most importantly, it seems the company tweaked the missile's altimeter in order to help it fly lower. The lower a missile flies, the better chance it has of hiding among the radar clutter created by surrounding terrain.

But if a lower-flying Flamingo is harder to shoot down, the improvement hasn't yet registered in the statistics. For now, Russia has figured out how to take out almost all of Ukraine's heaviest deep-strike missiles.

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