Russia has launched a string of massive daylight drone and missile barrages against Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, with strikes landing on Kharkiv, Sumy, Kherson, Dnipro, and the Kyiv region during working hours. For years, Moscow mostly relied on night attacks. Why the change?

For a start, Russia has bolstered its drone and missile production. Recent barrages have involved close to 500 aerial weapons in a single wave. That volume allows the Kremlin to experiment with timing in ways it found difficult before. Ukrainian military observers describe a strategy of the protracted strike, in which Russia stretches an assault across many hours and probes for seams in Ukraine’s layered defenses. Moscow still struggles with launcher availability, which caps the ceiling of any single salvo, though the stockpile of one-way drones has grown enough to sustain longer operations.