Ukraine’s Security Service has destroyed a jet-powered Russian Shahed with a new interceptor drone, and President Volodymyr Zelensky published the video on September 19, 2026. The SBU told Interfax-Ukraine the clip is the first footage of a jet Shahed being brought down. The drone, Zelensky wrote, has already been used in combat.

What Kyiv has not said is who built it, what it costs, or how many times it has worked. That silence is deliberate. A day earlier, at the Carpathian Eight summit, Zelensky said Ukraine was holding back details on its fast-drone interceptors, that two companies had passed combat tests, and that 67 companies are working on the problem.

DroneXL has followed this race since December, when a Wild Hornets Sting was filmed catching a jet-powered Geran for the first time. Russia answered in May with the Geran-4, which Ukrainian intelligence said was designed to outrun the interceptors. The SBU video is the next move.

Zelensky’s Video Shows the SBU Drone Killing a Geran-5 Class Target

The footage, posted to Zelensky’s Telegram channel and credited to SBU military counterintelligence, shows a gray delta-wing interceptor on a rail launcher in a field, then a jet-powered Shahed being destroyed. LIGA.net identified the target as a Geran-5, the fastest Shahed variant, flying at roughly 373 mph (600 km/h).

Zelensky posted after a briefing from acting SBU head Oleksandr Poklad. “A new interceptor drone has been developed and has already been successfully deployed,” he wrote, and thanked the developers and manufacturers working to scale production. The SBU confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that no earlier footage of a jet Shahed kill had been released.

The Geran-5 identification is LIGA.net’s, not the SBU’s. Ukraine’s GUR first described the Geran-5 in January, and DroneXL reported then that the airframe runs on Western electronics. Neither Zelensky’s post nor the SBU has named the variant in the video.

The interceptor itself is unidentified. The launcher and the planform in the screengrab do not match the quadcopter-style interceptors that dominated 2025, and Kyiv has released no specifications. Zelensky said on September 18 that Ukraine is “trying not to go into details yet” on interceptors against high-speed Shaheds, per Interfax-Ukraine, and that the goal is to review test results and move to mass production.

Kyiv Is Fielding Four Interceptor Models and Testing Ten More

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are evaluating four interceptor drone models in active combat sectors against Russian turbojet strike drones, the Kyiv Post reported on September 19. Around ten more manufacturers are testing prototypes ahead of military codification. Zelensky put the number of companies working on jet interceptors at 67.

The targets are the Geran-4 and the Banderol, which the Kyiv Post says fly between 249 and 373 mph (400 and 600 km/h) at altitudes of several kilometers. That puts them above mobile gun teams and beyond propeller-driven interceptors. Newsweek rendered the same figure as “up to 400 miles an hour” in its September 19 story; 600 km/h is 373 mph.

The speed problem is the whole story. When DroneXL covered the GUR’s teardown of the Geran-4 in May, the agency’s own phrasing was that Russia introduced the drone as a countermeasure against the effectiveness of Ukrainian interceptors. A $2,100 Sting that could catch a propeller Geran-2 has no business chasing a 373 mph jet, and the industry knows it: Quantum Systems said in July its Apex test aircraft hit 699 km/h with interceptors in mind.

Washington’s $2.68 Billion Package Buys Missiles and Radars, Not Interceptor Drones

The US State Department on September 18 approved a possible $2.68 billion Foreign Military Sale to Ukraine for air defense upgrades. The list runs to S-300 Clone missiles, GAM-67 missiles, laser-guided rockets, ITEL 1.5 launchers, launcher modification kits and RPS 202 counter-drone radars. No interceptor drone appears on it.

Ukraine would pay with European contributions and US Foreign Military Financing appropriated under the prior administration, the State Department said, with the FMF counted as a US capital contribution to the Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund on a 1:1 basis. The department said the sale would not alter the basic military balance in the region and would require no additional US personnel in Ukraine.

The American money buys the sensors and the missile layer. The kill mechanism against jet Shaheds, on the evidence of this week, is Ukrainian-built and Ukrainian-funded.

DroneXL’s Take

The interceptor-versus-jet-Shahed race is the drone story of this war that matters most to Americans, because the US is buying the expensive layer while Ukraine builds the cheap one. The $2.68 billion package is missiles and radars. The drone that caught a Geran on camera cost whatever a workshop charges.

One video is one video. It is Kyiv’s own footage, it shows one intercept, nobody outside the SBU has verified it, and “successfully deployed” is a claim by the government that released the clip. Kyiv is also withholding the maker, the unit cost and the number of kills, and said so on September 18. My read is that the withholding is about denying Russia a target for the next redesign, and the pattern behind the video is documented well enough to take seriously: a Sting caught a jet Geran in December, the GUR said in May that the Geran-4 exists to beat interceptors, and now a state security service has put a jet-Shahed kill on Telegram.

The cost math is what keeps me watching. General Cherry pitched a $900 interceptor against Romania’s $400,000 missile shots last month. Ukraine is launching 67 companies at a problem the S-300 Clone and GAM-67 lines in the State Department notice are meant to solve at a very different price per shot. If even one of the four frontline models reaches codification and scales, the per-kill cost of defending a Ukrainian city against jet Shaheds drops by orders of magnitude, and every air force with a Shahed problem, the US included, will want the drawings.

The open question is the one Kyiv has chosen to leave open: which company built the SBU’s drone, and whether it is one of the four already in frontline evaluation or a fifth. Zelensky said the next step is reviewing test results and moving to mass production. Watch the codification of the four models and any named contract; that is when the price and the maker come out, and that is when this stops being a video and becomes a supply chain.

Sources: Office of the President of Ukraine (Telegram), Interfax-Ukraine, Kyiv Post, LIGA.net, U.S. State Department, Newsweek

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.