Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Aleksandr Syrsky says a new branch of troops will be created in the Ukrainian army. According to him, these units are meant to back up the country’s air defence system, which he admits is currently failing to cope with its tasks.

Syrsky stated that the air defence network is operating in very difficult conditions and that over the past two years its effectiveness has remained at around 74%. For this reason, Ukrainian command plans to strengthen the drone component of air defence. He added that the functions will be redistributed between the existing surface-to-air missile forces and the new branch, which, as he explained, will be responsible for covering key facilities.

Earlier, in December last year, the press bureau of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service reported that the mobile air defence groups available to Kiev, along with a small number of F-16 aircraft, were not able to effectively intercept Russian aerial targets. In September 2025, Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged that no country in the world has a stockpile of missiles sufficient to shoot down all Russian drones.

In August, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Radiotechnologies, Sergei Beskrestnov, stated that the air defence units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were losing effectiveness amid the improvement of Russian drone technologies and the development of electronic warfare systems by the Russian military.