Ukrainian drones are killing ever more soldiers

Colonel Yehor Derevyanko is getting impatient. Three Russian soldiers, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are being watched, walk down a country road. “Kill them!” he snaps. Two loitering drones are despatched. The bunker beneath the eastern city of Kostiantynivka contains five screens showing drone feeds and three men using laptops. Suddenly one blurts out: “Fuck, we’ve lost them!”

The front line is 12km away. The cities of Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk are the next big targets in the Russians’ bid to seize the remainder of the Donetsk region. In 2023 they took Bakhmut, 26km to the north-east, and in February last year they took Avdiivka, 38km south. The fall of these two towns has seemed inevitable ever since, but Russian progress has been extremely slow. In early June Ukrainian intelligence reported they would be the target of a summer offensive. But Colonel Derevyanko, a commander in the 93rd Brigade, says he sees no preparations for one.

Indeed, he says, Russian soldiers sometimes fake advances. A week ago a Russian flag was lowered by drone on nearby Stupochky, for the fifth time. Russian soldiers falsely claimed they had taken the village. Such reports go up the chain of command, he says, and officers “get medals”.

Two Russian soldiers reappear on screen, then dart for cover under trees. New drones are despatched, and a plume of smoke rises where the men were last seen. The Ukrainians wait for an intelligence unit to confirm the kills. Every day, says Colonel Derevyanko, the Russians probe for weak spots. Small groups of ill-equipped, ill-prepared men are sent on what are usually suicide missions. If they move forward and stay alive, others will follow. The Russians are inching forward, but the cost in lives is extremely high, and rising. If technology a year ago meant that “we could kill 50 Russians,” says Mr Derevyanko, “now it is five times more.”

In Pokrovsk, 45km south-west, the Russians are closer. Neither city is in imminent danger of falling. But Colonel Derevyanko says nowhere in Kostiantynivka is safe: Russian drones can see almost anywhere. Before the full-scale invasion in 2022 some 67,000 civilians lived here. Now only 10-20% of them remain.

Some areas are more dangerous than others. The railway station is off-limits: it is within range of Russian fibre-optic drones. On roads into town tunnels of netting protect drivers. Military vehicles have anti-drone nets or metal fencing. They speed past shelled-out apartment blocks, while old women walk about with shopping bags. Artillery booms in the distance.

Eighteen months ago drones could target anyone 5km from the front line. Now that has extended to 15km. “We control the land” around Kostiantynivka, says Mr Derevyanko, “but the Russians control 90% of the sky.” That cuts both ways, though. On the far side of the front line lies Horlivka, seized by Russian-controlled rebels in 2014. On July 13th Denis Pushilin, the head of the Russian-controlled administration in occupied Donetsk, said 394 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted in Horlivka that week.

In another underground bunker, an engineer who uses the codename Bancomat manages a team of men developing and building drones. A large quadcopter nearing completion will serve as an aerial signal repeater, enabling surveillance drones to fly up to 40km from base. 3D printers hum in the background making parts. Men at workstations solder Chinese chips onto circuit boards. Bancomat’s team are working on AI technology. In the meantime, he says, “we need money!”

In a third bunker, Chief Lieutenant Volodymyr Demchenko commands the Black Raven drone battalion. A year ago it had 100 men; now it has 400. The team have just killed five Russians. “They had just arrived!” he says cheerfully. But drones, Colonel Derevyanko cautions, are not enough. He is happy that Donald Trump will resume sending Ukraine 155mm shells. If they get the weapons, he says, “we can stop them taking these cities.” ■