On a frontline where Russia has made the most gains in recent weeks, drone pilots wonder how long they can keep up the fight
I
n a warm bunker, lined with wooden logs, it is Dmytro’s job to monitor and help the drone crews on the frontline. Perhaps a dozen video feeds come through to his screen on an increasingly hot section of the front, running roughly from Pokrovske to Huliaipole, 50 miles east of Zaporizhzhia city.
Dmytro, 33, is with the 423rd drone battalion, a specialist unit only formed in 2024. He cycles through the feeds, on Ukraine’s battlefield Delta system, expanding each in turn. The grainy images come from one-way FPV (first person view) drones; clearer footage, with heights and speed, from commercially bought Mavic drones; at another point there is a bomber drone, available munitions marked in green.
It is a common sight across Ukraine’s front, though as Dmytro and his commander, Kostya, a captain, point out, the terrain below is distinctive. This is not the more defendable Donetsk, with its towns and slag heaps. It is flat, farming land punctuated by destroyed villages, the meeting point of the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
