‘It is impossible to outrun them’: how drones transformed war in Ukraine
Denys, a soldier with Ukraine’s Khyzhak brigade, describes a new kind of war. Standing in a barracks workshop with piles of basic Ukrainian First Person View (FPV) drones behind him, he says simply: “There are fewer gunfights because there are more drone fights.”
Frontlines that were once a gunshot apart are now a killing zone several miles deep, as Russian and Ukrainian drone squads, hidden about one- to three miles behind the frontline, target each other’s forces with simple aerial attacks. “Back in 2022, we were still running around with machine guns from the tree lines,” Denys says, almost with nostalgia.
Another brigade member, Dima, whose call sign is Khimik (the chemist), demonstrates an example with a video on his phone. Because an FPV drone explodes on impact, the video ends abruptly in a flash of white noise, and the consequences of the explosion are invisible, as in so many videos released by both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries online.
A Russian soldier several miles away had been spotted looking out of an upper floor of the building. Though FPV drones are relatively plentiful, the Khyzhak brigade (mostly police patrol officers who have volunteered to fight) tries to use them sparingly and patiently; the film shows the drone hovering and readjusting as its pilot tries to find the right angle to strike. “It’s like the job of a sniper,” Khimik says.