Two years of war against Russia: a look at the Ukrainian drone army

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 iQNQmc”>

The fate of the war in Ukraine could be decided on Alibaba. Do you know the Chinese online trading platform founded by the famous Jack Ma, the billionaire who keeps a close eye on the communist regime in Beijing? If not, ask for advice from Oleg, the nickname of Olegsky Asanov. The 30-year-old IT specialist has turned Alibaba into a real weapon of war against the ‘orcs’, as the Ukrainians call Putin’s soldiers. Today they are gaining ground on the front line after the capture of Avdiivka.

Oleg is one of the founders of one of the secret Ukrainian drone brigades, the organization “Social Drone UA”. He shows me her homepage on the Internet and her channel on Telegram. Nearly 3,000 Ukrainians from all over the country joined him. The youngest member is 13 years old and the oldest member is 77 years old. At least that’s how Oleg tells it. In the trunk of his car, he shows me the boxes of parts shipped here from China via Alibaba and thanks to the Ukrainian Postal Service.

Fight back with technical superiority

Strategists have been saying it since the Russian army began its assault on Kiev and the country’s east: Ukraine will never be able to sacrifice as many men as Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian trenches will never be able to handle as many bodies and wounded as those of the Russian army, which is so wasteful with the lives of its soldiers. The only possible answer for Ukraine under attack by Russia is to hit back with technical superiority.

The people at the front – some 500 miles east of Kiev – are dying like cannon fodder as a hail of bombs and rockets pierce shelters and shatter protective tree trunks. The most modern of all wars is being fought on both sides, whose ultimate combatants are the kamikaze drones, which are controlled with a 3D helmet and can pursue their targets even in the forests. The drone hunters are so feared that the snipers on both sides are ordered to eliminate them first and foremost. They are the eyes and the hope of a Ukrainian army forced to hold out while awaiting promises of Western ammunition and weapons.

3D printers as ‘factories’

But Alibaba is not a Ukrainian hangar. The Chinese platform is used by both the Russians and the Ukrainians to stock drones. Social Drone UA’s thousands of volunteers are supported by money from national fundraisers and donations from private individuals. The drone hunters also order on Amazon. And on European platforms. Oleg laughs: “Everything is made in China anyway. Everything we buy online, the Russians also buy. It’s a huge battle being waged online with our credit cards.” Oleg shows me the main carbon fiber drone parts one after the other. These have to be purchased abroad. He then shows me photos of his ‘factories’, such as the 3D printers are mentioned that produce the complementary plastic parts in apartments in Lviv, Kiev, Odessa and many other Ukrainian cities.

An army needs logistics. Social Drone UA has been playing this role, along with other similar organizations, since its founding in the summer of 2022. It is a citizen army. “We know everything our drones will do,” adds the young computer scientist and father of an eight-year-old daughter. “Some will explode over Russian positions, others will be used to find the wounded or carry out a reconnaissance mission. All army brigades have our coordinates. You place an order. We produce. It is a real industrial war in which women play a crucial role: thousands of them solder circuits at home.”

“I’m on board”

I asked to meet women who fly drones. And lo and behold, after driving about 20 miles and climbing a muddy hill bordering a forest on the edge of an industrial area, two stood in front of me. The women wore camouflage clothing. Tatjana is an instructor for piloting kamikaze drones. Her helmet forces her to push her dreadlocks back. The red polish of her fingernails contrasts with the khaki of her jacket, the uniform gray of the sky and the mud that sticks to our feet. Tatjana knows how to strike. For her it’s almost like she’s blowing herself up. Destroy yourself to kill. All this, sometimes over a distance of several kilometers. “A drone should be an extension of your body. I feel it when she flies. I’m on board.”

On one of the partitions of the meeting room where I meet her, in a prefabricated house on a vacant lot, the young woman has hung a photo of her two teenage boys. They are safe with an aunt near the Hungarian border. Her own daily life consists of this strange garrison, the Dronarium, led by Dimitri (56). Julia also operates here, but with a different model of remote-controlled aircraft: the Chinese Mavic 3, which she bought online for around 2,000 euros. Julia teaches the soldiers how to fly these drones, which specialize in surveillance and reconnaissance. She has the ability to fly the drones in a slalom between trees and close to the ground, then fly in a loop to avoid enemy fire. What I see is not a fight scene. I’m watching a workout. But this is what drone warfare looks like.

247 copies in one week

The soldiers in the Dronarium show me photos of what is really happening at the front. I saw it in May 2023, when the sudden appearance of a drone near the frontline in Novi Komar, Donetsk Oblast, saw me crash into the wall of a destroyed barn after a 50-meter sprint. Was the drone Russian? Was it a Ukrainian drone? Don’t know. But I still have her in my head. It’s like the drones I see now, hidden behind the birches, and then suddenly coming towards you like a swarm of bees. In the trunk of his car, Olegksi shows me a model of the bombs his drones carry under their propellers. The ammo is the size of a fist. The range of the drones is approximately ten kilometers.

The Dronarium is a camp populated by drones. The metal cabinets in prefabricated homes contain hundreds of devices that need to be adjusted and tested. Olegksi smiles when I ask him about delivery routes. Who will bring the drones, which are produced throughout the country, to the training centers? “The post office,” he answers. “It works. Like our railway. We receive dozens of boxes every day. I counted last week: 247 drones were delivered.” As in any army, the verification phase follows: batteries, controls and construction quality are tested before the drones are ready for the front.

“We are the most dynamic arms industry”

“There are things we cannot do,” Olegksi continues. “Our drone community produces, it doesn’t fight. We are like the defense industry. In fact, today we are the most dynamic defense industry in Ukraine.”

Tatjana laughs when I talk about the “tinkering” in her camp, which consists of a dozen tents located on the edge of the forest, where the dreaded “electronic insects” buzz. “The power of our secret army is that it can appear at any time,” she says. “I know that the Russians can block our drones and that they are actually very good at it. I also know that many of our drones, which to me look a bit like soldiers, will fall on the battlefield. At the same time, Tatjana says, the drones can be replaced. “The drones are not depressed. You have no family.” It is clear to me that no matter how electronic and digital drone warfare may be, there is still a person behind every device controlling it.

Source: Blick