2023-08-27 19:04:50
“Hello pilot, ready to fly? Like dew before the sun, enemies will vanish. We will continue to rule and prosper in our promised land.” A sweet female voice welcomes three Ukrainian soldiers into a trench Russian abandoned on the flanks of Bajmut. It is the default message that is heard when starting the small kamikaze drone homemade, a weapon that has been showing its potential on the battlefronts of Ukraine for 18 months.
The device, weighing just a few grams, Carries a kilo and a half of explosives. “A brick with four engines,” says Alexandr, a soldier in the Adam Group battalion. And, although its cost is around 400 dollars (some 370 euros) is capable of disabling russian armored of several millions. To achieve this, the three-person team that enters the first line only has nine minutes. Seven to move and two to drive. A time in which they must take off, locate a target, fly towards it and stamp the aircraft against the weakest parts of the enemy vehicle. “It is the dream of any child… and all men are a little children,” summarizes Alex, who will be 33 years old in September.
piloting with glasses
Almost like in a video game, the pilots put on glasses to control the drone from a bird’s eye view, while the rest watch from a screen. Beyond the electronic defense, there is a main obstacle: the camera connection is lost in the last meters and the impact is made blindly.
“When you fail it hurts, videos are joy for people. They could spend the money on their children, on food or on rent, but they have decided to contribute their salary to fight for their freedom”, admires Alexandr. For this reason, another drone records in the distance to supervise the maneuver. And if not , there is always faith.
“What do all the soldiers believe?” the pilot asks again, in a teacher’s tone.
-In God?
“In luck,” he answers, letting out a laugh.
The same luck —and humor— that his companion Andro had. together they destroyed five armored in a few hours, but they were about to stop adding enemy casualties. On one of their last missions, a Russian drone tracked them down. Now, lying on a stretcher in a field hospital, he gives a thumbs up as his eyes are cleaned and they heal the shrapnel cuts. It was her second day and she may not see again.
Year and a half of offensive
Because although Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine a year and a half ago, the flow of people joining the ranks of the Armed Forces has not stopped. Not even after the president’s decision Volodímir Zelenski to dismiss all regional recruiters, on suspicion of corruption. In these months, the Army has multiplied its members by four and the conflict has spread to many more families, but it also throws a blanket of silence over the internal debates. Wounds of a society divided between those who suffer the war every day and those who do not. Between those who can leave the country and those who cannot. And between those who put the dead and those who don’t.
Alexandr was already holding shields on the front line during the revolution of Maidan, when the riot police mercilessly beat and shot from the rooftops to kill. In a previous life, this soldier who divides his time between the three days a week that he spends at the front and the other three that he returns to the rear to test new drones he was a sociologist. A job that he left after dawn on February 24, 2022.
“It takes us a minute to unite to fight if we have an enemy in front of us, but when everything is over… when the enemy is not there… I don’t know why, but we fight amongst ourselves. We are Cossacks, it is in our blood,” he says with a sigh. He also does not know what he will do the day he has to return to daily life, to work at a table, without uniform and away from a cruel war, but one that catches the minds of many young men enlisted by the impulse to defend their country.
“Everything changes here. New tasks, new cities, new people, new adventures… things that explode!” explains Alexandr, his face full of emotion. “But when you come back… nothing happens. The boredom is the great enemy. Four years after the wars there is always a wave of suicides. In the Army there are many men used to solving things. To do and fulfill. What takes a day here, costs a month there. Everything is slow and bureaucratic.”
problems of post war parked by a founding battle even more relevant than the independence obtained on August 24, 32 years ago. The outcome is still a mystery, like when these pilots launch their drones against the ‘Z’ vehicles. “It’s going to be difficult,” admits the pilot. “I’m scared to go back to the office after all this.” Boredom, that thing so far from the trenches that Alexandr watches from the sky at the controls of kamikaze drones.
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