Ukraine says Russia built a wing-charge drone to topple power pylons

Russia's newest drone over Ukraine doesn't need a smart seeker. It needs patience.

Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) deputy chief Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitskyi told RBC-Ukraine that Russia has fielded a purpose-built pylon-killer whose wings "contain an explosive element capable of cutting through metal" — a charge meant to shear steel transmission towers rather than to blast a substation. The intended effect, per Skibitskyi, is not to collapse the grid but to force days-long repairs and rolling blackouts in regions close to the front line, where most of Ukraine's high-voltage pylons sit within drone range.

The device is the most specific public signal so far of how Russia plans to fight the 2026–27 winter energy campaign. The TechRadar Pro re-report, the Ukrinform writeup of the same briefing, and parallel coverage from The Defense Post and the Ukrainian defense outlet oboronka.mezha.ua all trace back to that single RBC-Ukraine interview. Skibitskyi did not disclose warhead weight, range, or launch profile; no Russian confirmation, forensic debris, or independent imagery has surfaced in the open record.

A steel lattice tower is a narrower target than a substation — four legs, a few conductor strings, and a small footprint that a shaped charge can shear at a single point. A conventional Shahed-style one-way attack drone, fielded by Russia in large numbers since 2024, is built for area blast against a substation roof or a transformer. A metal-cutting charge, by contrast, is placed against a structural member and detonated in shear, the way a shaped demolition charge cuts a steel beam. The wings wrap the charge around a leg or cross-arm and let the blast do the cutting work. That makes the device a slow, deliberate interdiction tool rather than a salvo weapon.

The design choice changes what Ukraine, and its partners, can do about it. The Shahed threat runs through air defense, electronic warfare, and terminal intercept — a small, fast problem at altitude. A pylon-killer, by Skibitskyi's own read, is more likely to fly low, slow, and at short range from a launch point already inside or near the contact zone. Counter-UAS doctrine, hardening of select pylons with cable bracing, and pre-positioned mobile repair crews all become more useful than additional interceptors. The repair time is the load-bearing metric: if damage takes days rather than hours to fix, the attacker only needs a steady tempo rather than a high one.

Skibitskyi is a known on-record source for Russian capability claims, and HUR is the body most likely to brief a specific weapons system before the debris is on the ground. The Institute for the Study of War's August 25, 2026 campaign assessment tracks the wider civilian-infrastructure targeting pattern but does not independently corroborate the new pylon class. Until Russian-language procurement data, intercepted telemetry, or post-strike imagery confirms the wing-charge design, the claim sits as a Ukrainian intelligence read on intent, paired with a physical description consistent with known shaped-charge engineering.

The same RBC-Ukraine cycle carried HUR's separate public line — surfaced through Ukrinform — that no Russia–Ukraine peace deal is expected by year-end. That posture closes the diplomatic off-ramp and pushes the energy campaign into the foreground. A purpose-built pylon-cutter, layered on top of the existing Shahed mass and the long-running Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, is consistent with a winter in which both sides accept sustained economic damage as a feature of the fight.

What to watch next: any recovered airframe from a strike on a high-voltage line in the Donetsk or Kherson grid corridors; HUR or the SBU releasing imagery of the wing geometry; and the first confirmed repair-time figure from Ukrenergo after a hit on a 330 kV or 750 kV line. Those three signals will move the story from a stated capability to a tested one.