In a dugout near the front in Donetsk, the Guardian joins Ukrainian police officers turned pilots during a shift
he armoured car’s bumpy high-speed journey comes to a halt, and the Guardian team are dropped off in the November darkness, where two Ukrainians soldiers await. Using hard to detect red and green torchlight, they follow an unmarked trail across rough fields, punctuated by the sounds of frontline shelling, until a concealed opening appears. Inside, a specialist drone crew is at work.
But in the bunker it is not a game – the deadly threat in the background is one reminder that it is too serious for that. The drone squad’s primary goal would always be to halt the remorseless Russian advance, though in Toretsk, and across the eastern front, the battlefield situation for Ukraine remains fraught.Vasyl Koryak, a police lieutenant colonel and deputy commander of the Khyzhak Brigade, at a command point in the Donetsk region.
In the bunker, the thermal imaging is revealing. Heat sources can be detected hundreds of metres away. In the early evening, 7pm to 8pm, the drone is sent up repeatedly. It flies at about 60km/h – meaning no person can outrun it – though for now the goal is to drop a bomb through a hole in a building where Russian soldiers are believed to be hiding. As the drones fly into Toretsk, outlines of buildings appear and stray dogs can be seen running out, as pointed out by one of the team members.
A drone mission lasts about 15 to 20 minutes, before the craft is brought back for a battery change. Soon it becomes possible to identify some landmarks, notably the slag heaps, by which the pilots must fly. We stay the entire night watching, though for the crew a shift lasts three days, minimising the risk of trips in and out.Soon after 1am, another team has news. They have found a person patrolling or walking alone – a target.
The background shelling is constant, though only once does the earth shake. “Only a person who is mentally not healthy is not afraid of dying,” says Rostik. Russian armed drones track the “road of death” to Toretsk, though Iryna says the team takes “all necessary measures” to protect themselves, including “praying vigorously”.The real fear comes from Russian one tonne glide bombs – partly guided air-launched munitions that Ukraine cannot counter.
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