On the afternoon of 4 September, a Russian drone struck the building of Ukraine's Security Service in Kyiv, flying straight at the office of the acting chief, Oleksandr Poklad. One source close to the security services was blunt about the mood afterward, telling LIGA.net that everyone was "not just furious — everyone is absolutely livid."

It was a rare direct hit on a top government building — the first time the SBU headquarters had been struck in the four-and-a-half-year war. The central building stands on Volodymyrska Street opposite St. Sophia's Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Russian drone strikes SBU headquarters in central Kyiv. Zelenskyy says “geography” of Ukraine’s response is set

Poklad was unharmed, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had ordered a response that mirrors the attack.

Beskrestnov: a planned operation, guided from the ground

Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, President Zelenskyy's adviser on defense technologies, argued the strike was too precise to be a stray hit.

"My personal opinion: the Geran was controlled and guided online through a MESH radio relay with internet access, which a Russian agent switched on somewhere nearby — within five kilometers — for a short period during the attack," he wrote.

Such a relay is small, about the size of half a school backpack, he said. He added that no other jet-powered Gerans were in the air over Kyiv at the moment of the strike, which, in his view, rules out the drone being flown along a relay chain reaching back into Russia and points instead to local control.

Europe calls it a major escalation

Katarína Mathernová, head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said the drone hit near where she and her colleagues live and work, and her Kyiv staff again had to leave their desks for shelter. Under her post, former EU Ambassador to Ukraine José Manuel Pinto Teixeira called Russia a terror state.

"Time for Ukrainian drones visiting the center of Moscow," he said.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said Russian drones had struck "the very heart of Kyiv," and pressed for tighter sanctions and deeper isolation of Moscow.

"The Kremlin’s objective remains unchanged: inflict maximum carnage, sow terror, and trample every norm of international law," he said.

Russia has been bolting small FPV attack drones to the wings of its long-range Gerans and releasing them deep inside Ukraine, far behind the front. The tactic may now have reached Kyiv Oblast, where an FPV drone was recently recorded, though it is not confirmed that a Geran delivered it, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, the president's adviser on defense technologies, told UNIAN. A Geran drop is one of the versions being weighed.

A Geran (the Russian-built version of Iran's Shahed-136) can fly hundreds of kilometers, so bolting short-range FPVs to its wings carries them far past the front line before release. Russia has done the same with its Molniya and Gerbera drones, and in May Euromaidan Press reported FPVs delivered this way, turning up dozens of kilometers from the border, on the ground, and even on the roofs of apartment buildings.

A year-old experiment, still rare

"The Russians have been running these experiments for a while. They attach two FPVs above the wings and drop them," Beskrestnov said.

He last recorded the tactic a week ago in Konotop, in Sumy Oblast, where Russian forces held two such drones on a carrier's wings and released them.

Until now, he added, it had shown up only on conventional Gerans. Holding an FPV on a jet-powered Geran is far harder because the speed is too high for a clean release, "but technologically it's entirely possible," Beskrestnov believes.

Ukrainian air defenders have brought at least one carrier down: in March, the Darknode anti-Shahed unit destroyed a Geran carrying two wing-mounted FPVs over Ukrainian airspace before it could release them, Militarnyi reported.

Low yield, mostly a scare tactic

Russia uses the tactic sparingly, and by its own measure, it does not work well.

"If you look at the number of successful strikes they've had with these FPVs, it's small," Beskrestnov explained, because controlling a drone dropped this way is difficult.

The FPVs carry no large warhead, and the launches often serve mainly to terrorize civilians, he said.

The dropped drones are usually flown over ordinary mobile networks rather than through a relay mounted on the carrier.

"There's an ordinary SIM card, and they control the FPV through it," Beskrestnov said, adding that Ukraine has been recording the practice on and off for about a year.

Russia has started launching its strike drones during the day, not only after dark. The reason is the new jet-powered Geran drones, which fire groups cannot take down, so for Russia there is no longer any difference between attacking by day or by night, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, President Zelenskyy's adviser on defense technologies, told Glavcom.

The near-hourly daytime raids are the new face of a campaign that culminated on 1 September, Knowledge Day, when Russia hit Kyiv and its region with ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones and killed 12 people. That strike culminated a six-day assault on the capital that began on 27 August, two days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe arrived in Moscow. However, even after that, the attack continued. Sirens now sound across Kyiv and the surrounding oblast roughly once an hour, around the clock.

Why the shift to daylight

The daytime raids carry an added economic and psychological weight, he said. The threat of strikes forces shops and businesses to open and close unpredictably, snarls transport, and can halt rail service.

"They understand perfectly well that daytime attacks hurt the population and business," Beskrestnov said, adding that the state railway Ukrzaliznytsia is paralyzed.

Keeping the defenders on their feet

A further aim is to hold Ukraine's air defense in a permanent state of readiness, Beskrestnov said. Round-the-clock attacks mean radar stations and generators must run without pause.

"Radar stations and generators run constantly, and that also puts a strain on our troops," he added.

Kyiv remains a Russian prime target because it carries symbolic as well as military weight, as the capital houses the government, business, and warehouses, and a strike there would resonate far more than terrorizing a small town.

Russian forces first concentrated on districts nearer the drones' launch corridors — Kyiv's Left Bank, and the Brovary and Boryspil raions — before switching to the other bank to hunt for targets. As the cold season approaches, he expects Russia to intensify strikes on the energy infrastructure it has so far spared.