Roman, also known as Peugeot, a fighter from the machine gun company of Ukraine’s 21st National Guard Brigade, lived through a brutal ambush on the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk Oblast. His group had almost no ammunition while Russian forces stormed them from three directions.

From Sevastopol to the front

Roman completed his mandatory military service in Sevastopol. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, he didn’t hesitate to enlist.

“Started from our city, then we went to the Kherson and Donetsk fronts. Got around a bit,” he recalls.

He was stationed across from the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant when it was blown up.

“A wasteland appeared there… just islands left. A massive catastrophe,” he says. 

The destruction exposed lake bed sediment containing more than 90,000 tons of dangerous heavy metals, a toxic cocktail that had been quietly accumulating on the reservoir floor since 1956.

Drone strike, buried comrades, and a fight for survival

On 26 March, Roman’s armored vehicle was hit by a Russian FPV drone on the Pokrovsk axis.

“We had to abandon the vehicle and walk,” he continues. 

Later, he was assigned to reach a buried position and dig out comrades trapped under debris.
Under shelling, five soldiers hid in a single trench. 

“The enemy was trying to storm from three sides. That’s when drone operators saved our lives,” Roman says. 

The UAVs struck back at the enemy, giving the fighters a chance to survive.

“Almost no ammo left”: when the sky saves the ground

In the woods, eight Russian soldiers encountered Roman’s five-man group. The Ukrainian defenders were left with “only two magazines for five of us.”

However, drone operators not only repelled the attack but also dropped extra ammunition. Despite heavy fire, the group crossed 13 kilometers of open terrain and made it out alive.

“I can say with confidence — I eliminated the enemy and sent several more to ‘the 300s’,” Roman adds.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump that Moscow plans to escalate military operations in eastern Ukraine during its summer offensive.

As of now, Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, including most of Luhansk Oblast, two-thirds of Donetsk Oblast, and parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts. 

He could leave the war, but he refused. Ukrainian soldier Andrii, 24, from Poltava, is a father of three and a fighter in the drone battalion of Ukraine’s 128th Mountain Assault Brigade. He has pulled over a thousand vehicles off the battlefield: tanks, BMPs, APCs, self-propelled guns, and trucks during his service in the army.

“I’m staying here because I don’t want the Russians to reach my home,” says Andrii, explaining his motivation. 

Andrii’s journey began as a conscript and led him to become an FPV drone operator. Initially, he served as a mechanic-driver of a BREM-1 evacuation vehicle, working right on the front lines, under shelling and rain, just 250 meters from the enemy.

“When my comrades jumped off the armor to hook up a vehicle, artillery hit us. One was killed. I survived because I was behind the controls,” he recalls.

“You’re the first I’ve ever allowed to use 4th gear”

For his exceptional courage, Andrii was awarded the Order “For Courage,” 3rd class. Recognized as one of the top mechanics in the Armed Forces, he was sent to Germany to train on the German Bergerpanzer-2 armored recovery vehicle, based on the Leopard tank.

The German instructor was stunned by how experienced and skillful the young Ukrainian soldier was.

“You’re an excellent mechanic-driver. I’ve never let anyone use 4th gear on this vehicle — you’re the first,” he says. 

It was a moment where Ukrainian bravery and mechanical precision earned deep trust across allied lines.

The enemy sees him only in their final moments

Today, Andrii operates a fiber-optic FPV drone, navigating into enemy dugouts and capturing every detail. He was trained by Officer Andrii Zadorozhnyi, a hero who was killed in April.

His wife and children wait for him at home. His daughter often calls him right at the front line.

“Ah, you’re in a trench again! When are you coming home?” she asks. 

But Andrii answers firmly, “My home is just 200 kilometers from the enemy. I’m doing what I have to do.”

Amid the Russian “human safari,” a drone attack on Kherson’s rabbi Yossef Itzhak Wolff left his family unharmed after a Russian FPV drone slammed into their vehicle near the regional capital. The strike occurred while the rabbi, his wife, and their young daughter were inside the car. Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Azman reported the incident on 17 July.

Drone strike targeted rabbi’s family in moving vehicle

On 17 July, Moshe Azman wrote on X that “two hours ago” a Russian FPV drone attacked the car of the Chief Rabbi of Kherson, Yossef Wolff. He stated that the drone hit the car at the entrance to Kherson, with the rabbi, his wife, and their daughter inside at the moment of impact.

Azman said he had just spoken with Rabbi Wolff, and emphasized the survival as a “very great miracle.” According to the post, the drone entered the car “at a very high speed.” No one was injured in the explosion.

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Video shows damage to SUV after direct strike

Azman shared a video recorded by Rabbi Wolff showing his Toyota Land Cruiser, which sustained significant damage. In the video, Rabbi Wolff says:

“A drone got into our car and exploded, but incredibly we are alive.”

Yossef Itzhak Wolff has served as Chief Rabbi of Kherson and the oblast since 1998 and is also chairman of the Board of the Kherson Jewish community.

Moscow’s “human safari” continues

Also on 17 July, Russian forces struck an ambulance in Kherson Oblast. The strike hit a medical team en route to a call in Zymivnyk. The vehicle was damaged, and two medics — a 49-year-old medical assistant and a 65-year-old paramedic — were injured.

And this morning, 18 July, Russian forces killed a man in the village of Veletenske in Kherson Oblast’s Bilozerka community. According to oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin, around 09:00, a Russian drone struck a local resident born in 1990 as he rode his bicycle. He sustained fatal injuries.

A video Ukrainian forces circulated online recently graphically depicts how little time a vehicle can linger along the front before it attracts the lethal attention of tiny, explosive first-person-view drones. 

A Ukrainian mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored truck—an MRAP—speeds up to the front to drop off fresh troops and supplies and pick up troops whose rotation is over. 

The MRAP idles for literally seconds before the first Russian drone barrels in. The vehicle suffers at least one drone impact as it speeds away. Fortunately for the Ukrainian crew and passengers, the MRAP’s thick armor absorbs the worst of the blast.

That harrowing experience is now ubiquitous. And it’s getting worse as both sides deploy more and better FPVs, including unjammable fiber-optic models and FPVs fitted with artificial intelligence that can steer them toward their targets.

“Bing on the front line is not good, and it’s mostly because of drones,” explained Andrew Perpetua, an independent open-source intelligence analyst in the United States. 

“Artillery and air strikes don’t help, but I would imagine the drones are doing the bulk of the damage right now, especially with regards to doing troop rotations, [delivering] supplies—like, any sort of driving a vehicle,” Perpetua added. “It’s not great. Especially if you’re going along a highway or any sort of major road, you’re getting hit.”

David Kirichenko, a Ukrainian-American war correspondent, has experienced dangerous rotations firsthand during his many trips to the front line since Russia widened its war on Ukraine 41 months ago.  “If you go too slow trying to avoid a mine, you can more easily get hit by a drone or any other Russian weapon system such as artillery,” Kirichenko said.

“Or if you drive too fast” to avoid the drones, he added, “you’d more easily drive over a mine. So it’s just a very dangerous game of kind of randomness of how you might die when you’re driving out.”

The peril doesn’t end when the road does. Braking to drop off and load troops and materiel, a truck might halt for mere seconds—or never fully stop at all. “The vehicle drives up and I mean, it’s: the doors open and it all happens just in a flash. Like all the supplies pop out, you hop out and you just got to run for cover,” Kirichenko said.

He recalled one drop-off where the drones were already overhead and waiting as the vehicle’s doors opened. “It’s just an extremely dangerous mission that I’ve witnessed firsthand.”

Drones as thick as flies

The sheer number of FPVs all along the front—both sides now build millions of the tiny drones every year—means it’s never safe anywhere within the roughly 30-km range of the best FPVs (which might benefit from other drones relaying their radio signals) or the bigger hexacopter bomber drones. 

Ominously, the drone kill zone is expanding as the drones improve—and fast. “At first, it was like, you know, the last 5 km were kind of the issue,” Perpetua said. “And then it became, like, the last 10, the last 15. And now it’s like the last 30. And it’s just going to keep going up.”

“I think over the course of the next few months, probably like six to eight months, we’re going to see it [the drone kill zone] go out to like 50 or 60 km” in either direction from the line of contact, Perpetua predicted.

He claimed Ukraine would benefit more from the extended drone kill zone. “The farther out you go, I think Ukraine will have the advantage because Ukraine has just simply better drones,” Perpetua said. “Russia is mostly relying on their fiber-optic drones” which range just 10 km or so. “I think Ukraine has much better long-range drones that don’t rely on fiber-optics—and that use more advanced connectivity” via wireless radio.

But Ukrainian commanders aren’t assuming better drones and a wider kill zone will definitely favor Ukraine. Kirichenko noted more Ukrainian units deploying more ground robots for more different tanks inside the kill zone—all in an effort to safeguard Ukraine’s most precious resource: its infantry.

“The more that you can get ground robots through those very dangerous missions of getting resupplies, handling your logistics,” Kirichenko said, “the more that you can save your human soldiers.”

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