Ukrainian soldiers rose before dawn, stretched and rubbed their eyes, rolling sleeping bags in the basement hiding place near the country’s eastern frontline. Their day won’t take them far away. Most people stay in the basement, using keyboards and joysticks that control drones.
In an unstable moment in Ukraine, soldiers are participating in an initiative by the Ukrainian military, with the hopes of President Trump’s ceasefire negotiations ending the war and fearing that the United States will withdraw its military support, and Christianity hopes to keep it in the absence of battle.
On Sunday, a week of impeccable wars in Ukraine, including the deadliest attacks on the capital in nearly a year, the Trump administration sent some contradictory signals about what will happen next. President Trump held a brief meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend, and Mr. Trump said it was going well and in later comments he did not rule out sending more weapons. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the United States is about to leave the peace table and walk away, saying the next week will be “very important.”
If peace talks fail, or the United States decides to terminate arms transport, the Ukrainian drone initiative may be more important than ever. The program, called the UAV Line, doubles over Ukrainian-assembled unmanned systems, mostly small explosive drones flying from basement shelters.
The plan once again reminds Ukraine of its ability to innovate during this war, which helped it fight against its larger enemies.
“It’s no longer a person-to-person,” said the commander of the squad that operates the basement in eastern Ukraine.
The group flew first-person perspective drones, which made the pilot’s video equivalent to the front seats as bombs ran towards Russian soldiers, cars, tanks or bunkers. To be consistent with the military agreement, the commander only requires that it be determined by its name and rank of private Artems.
Ukraine’s military said that even before the UAV program planned, Ukraine relied heavily on unmanned weapons, and now, about 70% of the casualties in the two wars, the Ukrainian military said, more than all other weapons combined, including tanks, howitzers, howitzers, mortars and mines. Although these other weapons are partially provided by the United States, the Ukrainians are assembled from the domestically made components by most of China-made components.
In the works since last fall, the expanded drone program was officially announced in February, and was Kiev’s Plan B, which began with a full-scale invasion of Russia in 2022, failing if the talk ended.
The drones on both sides have been buzzing continuously on the battlefield. In the UAV war, Russia has an advantage in quantity, while Ukraine has an advantage in quality, often becoming the first adoption of new technological approaches. These include flying retransmitter drones to extend the range of the blasted drone and guide the drone with fiber-free fiber threads, the lines that are not disturbed.
The drone’s strategy was overshadowed by a ceasefire negotiation, and Mr. Trump’s dismissive assessment of Ukraine’s opportunity was without U.S. aid. (“You don’t have a card,” he told Mr. Zelensky during a controversial Oval Office meeting). But, according to military analysts, drone deployments have produced results.
It is partly attributed to it for its three-month slowdown in the Russian offensive in Ukraine. Russian troops, which emerged rapidly last fall, remained in virtual booths since January, despite expensive attacks from the Russian military.
According to Deepstate, an analysis group linked to the Ukrainian military, the Russian offensive occupied 279 square miles on Ukrainian territory in November. The organization’s analysis shows that Russia occupied only 51 square miles in March. Russia’s main gains throughout the winter expel all or almost all of the Kursk region in Russia.
Ukraine plans to fill out four drone battalions to become drone regiments, each expanding from about 700 soldiers to 2,500 soldiers, arming first-person perspective drones, other soldiers who dumped bombs and ground systems for unmanned ground. The last one includes a remote-controlled vehicle equipped with a machine gun.
From radar inventions during World War II to night vision goggles in Vietnam, all wars promoted innovation. However, Ukraine’s drone strategy was also born after more than three years of war. The motivation for Ukrainians to join the army decreased. With the universality of the evasion draft, resupply of force has become a challenge.
Drones will not replace soldiers; in fact, each flight of a first-person perspective drone requires up to four soldiers. For last week’s flight in northeastern Ukraine, a drone team consisted of pilots, navigators, an armored pilot and a retransmission drone pilot.
However, it is much easier to recruit these positions than to find soldiers to find infantrymen who will serve in the tide.
Ukrainian soldiers have fewer losses than Russia, and hope to restrict direct participation. That’s where the drone comes in.
The strategy focuses on land about 18 miles behind the Russian frontline. By reconnaissance and strike drones saturated in the area, mass attacks by Russian soldiers can be prevented. The drone flies at about 80 miles per hour and can exceed any space moving on the ground.
“The fair assessment is at work,” said Michael Kofman, a senior researcher at the Carnegie International Peace Foundation, of the UAV program. He said that Russian equipment shortages and winter weather play a role, he said.
The goal is to design a force that “can lock in most of the front” and maintain itself without our help, Coffman said. However, Ukraine remains deeply dependent on the United States and European countries to prevent air defense systems from defending missiles away from the frontline.
Last year, the Ukrainian military conducted a test when Republicans in Congress were trapped in Ukraine’s supplementary spending bill. The artillery ammunition was running so low that some crew members fired only cigarette boxes. In a section in the front near the town of Chasiv Yar, the drone crew was subjected to a series of attacks that interrupted the Russian offensive.
The drone costs $500 to $750, which is less than a large shell and costs about $3,000.
Other troops are paying attention. This year, the U.S. Marine Corps set up its first first-person perspective drone to fly an experimental attack drone squad.
The private Artem is serving with the Achilles Groumiment, one of the units recently expanded under the UAV program. Like one-fifth of all recruits in the regiment, he was a former computer programmer who worked in the outsourcing industry in Ukraine before the Russian invasion.
Despite operating in cover about three miles from the front line, the drone crew neither retained the barbarians of war nor had any danger.
On Friday, Ukrainian crew captured a Russian soldier in the Open and sprinted on the green grass in the floodplain of the Oskir River. He is running for safety in the woods. However, the final frame of the video feed shows a close-up of the disguise, which shows that he hasn’t done it.
Later that day, when Ukrainian soldiers who placed the drone outdoors were fired outdoors, the Russian drone buzzed overhead and then speeded down and hit the vicinity with a thunderous boom.
Yurii Shyvala Reports by Kharkif, Ukraine.
