22-07-2025
See how drones are dominating every corner of the war in Ukraine
KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine—On the sun-drenched eastern front of this grueling war, Ukrainian drones are doing more and more jobs, from killing Russian troops to evacuating casualties to bringing dinner to foxholes.
Around this city, some infantry from Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade have been stuck in their dugouts for three months. Rotating the troops must wait for fog and rain to block the view of Russian drones.
So Ukraine's air and ground drones bring the men food, water and ammunition, said Lt. Col. Yehor Derevianko, a battalion commander in the brigade. 'We even deliver burgers."
He's been fighting Russian forces in Ukraine's east since 2014, and says the war is evolving faster than ever. Drones are now so dominant that they force everything else—infantry, armor, artillery, logistics and even trench design—to adapt to a sky full of buzzing robots.
The wiry commander leads the defense of his sector from a basement full of large screens under an abandoned apartment block. Men with laptops direct drone pilots to where Russian infantry are trying to infiltrate the fields and woodlands around the city.
Members of the 93rd Brigade monitor drone footage in a basement in Kostyantynivka, eastern Ukraine.
On one screen, the crosshairs of a reconnaissance drone fixed on a Russian soldier squatting in a bush. A small quadcopter drone closed in slowly and dropped a grenade. It missed.
'He's going to die of old age out there," grumbled Derevianko. The bush swayed gently in the summer breeze. A second grenade turned it into a cloud of gray smoke.
Kostyantynivka, an industrial city once home to 67,000 people, is one of the main targets of Russia's summer offensive. Moscow's invasion forces are inching westward across the fertile Donetsk region, exploiting their greater numbers but losing hundreds of assault troops a day for small gains. Drones have overtaken artillery as the number-one cause of Russian fatalities, according to Ukraine's military.
With the experienced 93rd Brigade holding firm in Kostyantynivka, the Russians are trying to outflank it via the countryside. Russian infantry must first cross miles of deadly open farmland. They try on foot or on motorbikes.
Kostyantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, is a key target in Moscow's summer offensive. Kostyantynivka's train station has been destroyed by Russian shelling and drones.
Most are picked off before they come near Ukrainian lines by first-person-view drones, known as FPVs—aircraft the size of dinner plates with four rotors, controlled through a live feed on a pilot's goggles.
The surviving Russians try to regroup, then assault a Ukrainian trench or dugout. 'We have to hit them one by one, before they gather," said Derevianko.
The most recent armored attack here was around New Year's, when 14 Russian armored vehicles tried to run the gantlet of drones. Only two got close. Then the defending infantry hit them with rocket-propelled grenades.
But Russia's drones are also tormenting Kostyantynivka. Their fixed-wing Orlan and Zala reconnaissance drones survey the city continually. Russian FPVs connected to long fiber-optic cables, which make them immune to electronic jamming of the signal, hit anything they see, including civilians.
Outside the tidy command basement, the city is dying. Only a fraction of its residents remain. Most shops have closed. Airstrikes scar buildings. Orange husks of burned-out civilian cars lie where they were hit by drones.
Derevianko, of the 93rd Brigade, inside an armored vehicle.
Army vehicles rumble about covered in grills, nets and other welded-on drone shields, looking like dystopian fantasies from a Mad Max movie.
Pvt. Nikita Kremnov rescues wounded infantry in a Nissan Navara pickup sprayed a dull green and sporting a full-body cage with netting. Beyond the city limits, he uses a more nimble quad bike. The last mile to the trenches is now so exposed to Russian fiber-optic drones that the battalion uses only unmanned ground vehicles—drones with tires or tracks—to carry wounded men back from a foxhole.
Kremnov was hit and wounded by a fiber-optic drone while evacuating a wounded man who was having an epileptic seizure. 'There was nothing I could do about it. I had to carry on driving."
Thirty miles to the southwest, the city of Pokrovsk is further down the road to destruction. It hasn't fallen so far, but the damage is extensive. The Russian advance, like slow-moving lava, is consuming every town it touches with drones and heavy glide bombs.
A Ukrainian unit launches an observation drone near Orikhiv, southern are doing more and more jobs in the war.
A T-72 tank of Ukraine's 68th Jaeger Brigade hides under the thick summer canopy of a copse outside the city. The unit's tanks work in shifts, rolling into Pokrovsk to fire at Russian targets from long range.
The Soviet-era tank was captured from the Russians early in the war. Its crew call it 'Lyalya," an affectionate name a small girl would give a doll. The previous night, Lyalya killed a group of Russian infantry with three direct hits on their dugout.
In a drone war, tanks are useful only as mobile artillery pieces, said the company sergeant, who goes by the call sign Puma. Used in an assault, it wouldn't even get near the fight, he said. 'FPVs are just going to kill us."
The tank had a narrow escape from a Russian FPV drone only days earlier. It was heading into Pokrovsk before dawn when a car's headlights lit it up from behind. 'Morons," said Puma. The tank's electronic defenses soon sensed a drone and tried to jam it.
Members of the 68th Jaeger Brigade on a tank hidden among the trees near Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine.A mechanic works on the tank. In a drone war, tanks are useful only as mobile artillery pieces, one company sergeant said.
The crew used their special tactics, said Puma: 'Accelerate, maneuver, pray." The drone exploded yards away.
In a secret bunker under acacia groves and sunflower fields, men of the Bulava drone unit are tinkering with technology to stay a step ahead of the Russians in a robotic arms race.
Serhiy Ignatukha, the unit's leader, holds up one kind of answer to the Russians' fiber-optic drones. It's an FPV armed with four 12-bore shotgun barrels.
Recently, one such drone had a dogfight with a Russian FPV. Its shotguns missed, so it downed the enemy drone by ramming it and breaking its propellers, said a drone technician known by his call sign Udav.
The unit is also working with Ukrainian drone manufacturers on more sophisticated solutions, including FPV-borne lasers that can cut fiber-optic cables.
A member of the Bulava drone unit makes antipersonnel mines to be dropped from drones.
FPVs using artificial intelligence could become the next big thing, said Udav. He held up a drone with a tiny AI chipboard. Once a pilot has selected a moving target, the drone can complete the attack autonomously from up to 700 yards away, even if jamming blocks the signal.
Improved versions are coming out every few months. 'This one is the sixth generation and it has had no failures," Udav said.
'Previously, when you saw 15 Russian vehicles, it was scary. Now it's fun," he said. 'Sadly it's the same for the enemy's drone units."
A bomb maker with the unit used a 3-D printer to make drone-dropped mines. Costing $9 each to make, the mines stick in the ground, spray out several 26-foot-long tripwires with small anchors and wait for Russian infantry.
The Bulava unit is part of Ukraine's Presidential Brigade, which also performs ceremonial guard duties in Kyiv but mostly became a regular combat brigade after the 2022 invasion. Ignatukha and his men saw the war changing and got into drone technology, using their own salaries to buy equipment and build their skills.
The Bulava unit is part of Ukraine's Presidential Brigade, which also performs ceremonial guard duties in Kyiv but mostly became a regular combat brigade after the 2022 invasion. Serhiy Ignatukha, in a green T-shirt and beard, oversees the unit's efforts to stay a step ahead of Russian drone forces in the robotic arms race.
'We had to think out of the box to survive," said Ignatukha. The informal unit, clad in a miscellany of T-shirts, looks more like a tech startup than a palace guard.
East of Kostyantynivka, men of the Alcatraz Battalion are fighting Russia's infantry and trying to survive its drones. The unit, part of the 93rd Brigade, is made up of convicted criminals who have signed up to be assault troops. Honorable service gets a conditional release or pardon. The first missions last year went well, said men in the unit. But drones are exacting a growing toll.
Convicted thief Pavlo Shyptenko has survived four attacks by FPVs. He was rescuing a wounded comrade this spring when a quadcopter dropped a grenade on him. A tree branch broke the grenade's fall, saving Shyptenko, but coin-sized bits of shrapnel still cut into his back and neck.
Full of adrenaline, he carried the wounded man to a car and only noticed a terrible pain when he sat down to drive, he said. Now he's telling new recruits what to do if there's a drone above them.
'Stay still and wait for the grenade drop. Then you have three to five seconds to run away," he said, proudly wearing an Alcatraz unit T-shirt. If a suicide drone is trying to crash into you, wait and dive out of the way, he said.
The Alcatraz Battalion interviews applicants for suitability, and doesn't take rapists or serial killers. But it has recruited some murderers. 'We are also murderers," said the deputy battalion commander, a professional officer known by the call sign Daredevil.
On a balmy evening, men from Alcatraz trained in the woods, practicing digging covered shelters capable of withstanding FPV hits. 'This one is for a funeral," Daredevil told the diggers of a weakly protected foxhole.
Daredevil carries a scar over his right eye from when a Russian shot him in a basement gunfight early in the war. 'We came out of that basement. They didn't."
It's a different war today, he said. 'The lions from 2022-2023, who were real warriors, no longer exist," he said. Heavy losses have reduced the quality of soldiers on both sides. 'The men now are not capable of the same feats. Now it's a war of drones."
Ukrainian soldiers have had to adapt to a sky full of drones. Drones are exacting a toll on Ukrainian troops.
Write to Marcus Walker at
