A town called Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine faces relentless attacks from above. In June 2026, reporters documented Ukrainian soldiers shooting at Russian drones with assault rifles while walking through city streets — a striking image that tells you something fundamental about how this war has changed.

Druzhkivka sits in a region called Donetsk Oblast, where the heaviest fighting has taken place since Russia's full invasion started in February 2022. The front line separating Russian and Ukrainian forces has moved outward by about 200 kilometers in the past year. That shift has pushed inhabited towns much closer to active combat zones, leaving places like Druzhkivka dangerously exposed.

How Drones Became the Main Threat

The airspace over eastern Ukraine is now filled with unmanned aircraft at all times. Both Russia and Ukraine fly drones constantly — first to scout enemy positions, then to strike targets. Think of it like a predator circling overhead that never stops watching. Traditional military tactics, developed for wars fought on the ground without this kind of constant aerial threat, don't work well anymore.

You can see this shift in the physical landscape. Soldiers have strung protective nets over roads and walking paths to hide from drones. These nets have been in use since at least December 2025. Where nets don't exist, soldiers shelter inside ruined buildings, using the debris from earlier explosions as cover.

The most dangerous weapons in this aerial war are called FPV drones — small unmanned aircraft that fly at high speed toward a target, controlled by a person watching through a camera. They are cheap to make, hard to hear coming, and nearly impossible to shoot down once they start their final dive toward a target. Soldiers firing rifles at drones, as seen in Druzhkivka, is essentially a last resort. It only works against slower aircraft and only when they are close enough to see.

Ukraine's answer is to build its own drones. The government promised more than $1 billion to create a domestic drone production system — a plan that started in 2023 and has only grown as the war continues. Ukrainian soldiers now use dedicated air-defense systems to shoot at Russian drones instead of relying on small arms.

But there is a catch. Russia keeps making cheap drones in huge quantities — FPVs and larger loitering munitions. The sheer number of drones Russia produces makes it hard for Ukraine to destroy them all, even with better equipment. It is a numbers game as much as a technology game.

What is happening in Druzhkivka is becoming normal for frontline towns: protective nets overhead, soldiers in city streets firing at invisible aircraft, civilians trying to live in places where danger comes from the sky as often as from the ground. As the front line continues to expand, more towns will face this situation. The drone war is no longer something added to the regular fighting — it is now the main way this war is fought.