Ukrainian drone pilots are watching the roads that keep Russian forces supplied closely, hunting for targets with a fleet that is reshaping the war’s battlefield.
In a basement in Kharkiv, hundreds of kilometers from the drone over Russian-held territory, pilots wait for movement. When a vehicle appears, they will nudge the controller, sending the aircraft diving toward its target to disrupt Russian supplies deep behind the front.
“Our mission is to cut logistics,” said Kat, commander of Ukraine’s K-2 brigade, which fires midrange drones. “Cut off their supply lines, and the infantry on the front line have no food, no ammunition, no night vision, no batteries. Nothing. That’s how we’re wearing them down in every sense.”
Soldiers call signs and real names have not been used, in line with military regulations.
By striking the roads that carry fuel, ammunition and reinforcements, Ukrainian commanders say they have made logistics slower, costlier and far less predictable, helping stall Russian advances and enabling Ukrainian counterattacks and strikes into illegally annexed Crimea to isolate the peninsula from the mainland.
Until recently, much of that territory lay beyond Ukraine’s reach. Front-line drones lacked the range, while long-range drones were reserved for strategic targets hundreds of kilometers away. Between them stretched a 25- to 200-kilometer (15- to 125-mile) corridor where Russian troops and supplies moved with relative freedom.
Fixed-wing midrange drones equipped with Starlink satellite communications have begun closing that gap, turning Russia’s logistical rear into an active battlefield.
“They’re ensuring that the Russians are constantly pressured along their supply logistics lines and that they are unable to supply certain parts of the front so that the situation may be more controllable,” said Samuel Bendett, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Ukraine will have to sustain the pressure while Russia develops countermeasures, Bendett said. He expects Moscow to adapt eventually but said its larger military allows it to absorb heavier losses in the meantime.
“The question is whether Ukraine can keep this pressure up over the next few weeks and months,” he said.
The machinery of the midrange campaign hides in plain sight. An ordinary office is a command post. A carpenter’s workshop is a drone assembly point. A quaint village house, a launch site.
The nerve center of K-2, one of Ukraine’s most elite drone units, sits in a drab workspace. The workstations are cluttered with coffee mugs, energy drink cans and e-cigarettes.
In May, the unit launched 800 midrange drones, 650 of which struck intended targets — all from this room.
Dressed in civilian clothes, the pilots sit beneath harsh fluorescent lights, eyes fixed on computer screens, as if working late over spreadsheets.
But the grids on their monitors are target lists and satellite maps. As they plot each flight before takeoff, a separate unit launches the aircraft more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) away. Control then passes to the pilots in Kharkiv, who fly it for up to four hours more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) behind Russian lines.
Some who were driven from their hometowns by Russia’s invasion now revisit familiar streets through a drone’s lens, passing old schools and childhood haunts, searching the places where they once played for concealed Russian troops and ammunition depots.
A whiteboard tracks an ongoing competition among the unit’s 10 drone crews. The current record stands at 17 consecutive hits.
Missing a high-value target can be as memorable as hitting one. After one such miss, brigade commander Col. Kyrylo Veres called the crew and scolded: “Are you drunk?”
Some days, the screen reveals little more than a truck hauling fuel and supplies or a lone soldier on a motorcycle. Other days, it lights up with more prized targets: a loaded multiple rocket launcher or a cluster of Russian troops.
Among the top pilots is Pharaon, 20, who said the work comes naturally — an extension of the video games he grew up playing.
“When I was a kid, I used to go to computer clubs where we played Counter-Strike over a local network,” he said. “The competition here is pretty much the same. It’s about who can kill more enemy troops or take out the biggest target.”
Ukraine’s breakthrough came earlier this year when SpaceX cut off Russian forces’ unauthorized access to Starlink satellite services, disrupting Russia’s drone operations and communications.
That gave Ukraine an advantage, allowing upgraded drones to evade detection, resist jamming and strike more accurately while Russia raced to adapt.
“The blocking of Starlink for Russian forces was one of the most significant battlefield developments of the year,” said Rob Lee, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program.
The success of Ukraine’s midrange campaign is a consequence of that shift.