The Ukrainian special-forces commander checks the line of seven explosive drones arrayed in a farmer’s field near the Russian border, making sure their targeting systems are properly set. Then he sprints for cover.
Moments later, there’s a cracking sound as the first launcher – which looks like a modernized version of a medieval trebuchet – fires a sleek black drone and its 15-kilogram payload north toward Russia, followed by the buzz of a jet propeller engine coming to life. The other six drones are launched in quick succession. “Bye-bye,” the commander, a veteran operative code-named Most, says with a laugh as the black silhouettes disappear one-by-one into the dark grey sky.
It was the first salvo in an hour-long attack by Most’s team, all members of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service. In total, 35 unmanned aerial vehicles – each sent on kamikaze one-way trips – were fired into Russia during a Tuesday night mission to which The Globe and Mail was given exclusive access.
Take a closer look at the Ukrainian drones' takeoff, as recorded by The Globe's Mark MacKinnon through a night-vision camera.
Mark MacKinnon/The Globe and Mail
Their target was a missile storage warehouse 600 kilometres away in the western Russian region of Tver. Just over four hours later, the HUR team saw the first results of their mission as Tver residents began writing on social media about the buzzing sound overhead. One post on a Telegram channel about local Tver news said part of a nearby military facility was on fire. The post was quickly deleted.
Wednesday morning, the Russian Ministry of Defence declared it had shot down 29 Ukrainian drones the previous night, suggesting to the Ukrainians that at least six of the Black Fury drones had hit their target. “Minimum,” said another of the HUR team’s commanders, code-named Evrei. “But we never trust Russian news.”
Tuesday night’s mission was also considered successful because the HUR team managed to carry out the attack without drawing any Russian fire onto their launching position, though about 30 minutes later we saw the nearby sky light up with red tracer fire as Ukrainian anti-aircraft guns targeted a Russian drone that may have been looking for the source of the Black Fury attack.
Wednesday morning saw a fuller Russian response, in the form of a barrage of 37 drones and four missiles targeting Kyiv, which sent residents of the Ukrainian capital scrambling into bomb shelters as explosions boomed over the city shortly after dawn. Most of the blasts were reportedly caused by Ukrainian air defences shooting down the incoming projectiles.
This is the aerial front in the war between Russia and Ukraine. The drone war, as it’s often referred to, is nearly as important as the tank and infantry battles taking place on the ground along a 1,000 kilometre front line that stretches from the Kursk region of Russia and through much of eastern and southern Ukraine. In addition to trying to damage Vladimir Putin’s war machine by striking targets like the missile warehouse, a secondary goal of the Ukrainian strikes is to affect Russian public opinion by giving Russians a taste of the air raid sirens and explosions Ukrainians have been living through since Mr. Putin launched his invasion in February, 2022.
One of the Ukrainian drones fired Tuesday night had “For Ilya” written onto its tail, a reference to the 14-year-old son of one of the HUR team who was killed by a Russian missile strike this summer.
“It’s not just the quantity of people killed, it’s the effect,” Evrei explains shortly before the first Black Fury was sent skyward. “Our children don’t sleep, so their children shouldn’t sleep either. Maybe after this, they will understand.”
Iranian-made Shahed drones destroyed this market and medical clinic in Kyiv last week, part of an escalating trend in strikes from Russia.
Up close, the drone war – long-distance and computerized – bears little resemblance to the brutal battles being fought on the ground, where the two armies grind violently into each other. But with Ukrainian troops and tanks being slowly pushed backward by Russian forces in recent months, it’s in the air that the Ukrainians feel they can punch back best.
The Ukrainian attack on Tver was part of an escalating exchange of long-range strikes in recent weeks. Monday saw Russia launch an unprecedented 145 drones at Ukrainian cities in a single night in what was seen as part of a weeks-long effort to exhaust Ukrainian air defences ahead of a feared mass missile launch targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. HUR estimates that half of the more than 2,000 drones launched by Russia in October were decoys that didn’t carry any explosives.
Ukraine, in return, carries out nearly daily long-range attacks of its own, with HUR teams recently striking such strategic targets as a helicopter base near Moscow, an oil refinery in the city of Saratov and two warships in the Caspian Sea. Most says the Russian side has a disadvantage in the drone war because its territory is so large that it’s nearly impossible to fully cover with anti-aircraft defences.
Despite that, Ukraine simply doesn’t have the resources to match the Russians blow-for-blow, particularly as Kyiv’s backers in Washington and Brussels restrict it from using Western-supplied long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia. All the drones HUR uses in its operations are designed and produced at secret facilities inside Ukraine.
Tuesday’s mission began on an ominous note. “There are a lot of Orlans above us, so we’re changing the plans a little,” Evrei said, referring to a model of Russian reconnaissance drone, as he and Most – both 45-year-old residents of Kyiv – hunched over a premission meal of borscht, tea and perogies. (Evrei’s code-name means “Jew,” even though he’s not Jewish, while “Most” means “Bridge” in Russian, the mother tongue of both men. The Globe is using only the code names of the two colonels since HUR special-forces officers are otherwise not allowed to speak to the media.)
Shortly afterward, we piled into the back of an SUV and headed north, leaving the highways for the muddy and broken back roads.
Globe journalists and their HUR hosts took care to switch off detectable electronics as they navigated the fields near the Russian border.
To avoid detection, we switched off our mobile phones and put them into magnetic pouches to ensure our SIM cards weren’t being tracked. The lack of modern conveniences such as GPS led to a semi-comical half-hour detour as Most drove the SUV along winding forest paths near the border, repeatedly passing through the same half-abandoned village as Evrei tried to direct him from memory to the meeting point.
Even as he bickered with Most about which potholed trail to follow, Evrei said he preferred Ukraine’s odds in this type of battle. A veteran of Ukraine’s prolonged fight to defend the eastern city of Bakhmut, he saw how Russia finally captured the city in the spring of 2023 using “human waves” of soldiers that pushed forward no matter how many of their comrades died around them. The Russians had more men, tanks and artillery shells than the Ukrainians could resist – and the Russian commanders were willing to sacrifice their men’s lives to capture the city. “After Bakhmut, we started to focus on long-range unmanned systems. We realized we couldn’t beat the Russians by force, so we must beat them with technology,” Evrei said.
The Ukrainians are proud of their homegrown armada of explosive drones – each Black Fury costs about US$60,000 to produce – but they launch them knowing they could be doing much more damage if Western leaders would let them use U.S.-made ATACMS and British-made Storm Shadow missiles to strike at targets inside Russia. Both weapons can deliver more than 20 times the explosive charge that a Black Fury can carry.
“It’s strange, at the least. Why give us something and then don’t allow us to use it?” said Most, as we finally approached the launch site. “The North Koreans send troops, send missiles – but democratic countries always hesitate.” (U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders fear being dragged into a direct conflict with Moscow if Western long-range weapons are used to target Russian territory.)
The frustration is compounded by fatigue. Most and Evrei, along with many of those under their command, have been fighting since 2014, when Russia first annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and launched the proxy war in the southeastern Donbas region that preceded 2022’s full-blown invasion.
“Of course we’re tired, but we’re military guys and, talking reality, there isn’t any other option for us,” Most said. Evrei tried to retire from HUR twice before the invasion began, only to be called back into service both times.
Many in the HUR team have been fighting since the Crimean annexation of 2014. 'Of course we're tired,' Most says.
Roman Kostenko, head of Ukraine’s parliamentary defence committee, said earlier this month that the country needed to mobilize another 500,000 soldiers just to meet current front-line requirements. In an interview, opposition MP Inna Sovsun – whose husband has been serving as a military surgeon since the first day of the invasion – said there was “a growing feeling of injustice in the society” as some Ukrainians fought for years on end while others carried on with relatively normal lives. She said the conscription effort was stalled in parliament amid a debate over how long soldiers should have to serve.
Even if the country hits the ambitious mobilization goal, new conscripts won’t have the training or experience to join special-forces units like those deployed by HUR. So Most, Evrei and their comrades will fight on.
HUR’s top commander, Lieutenant-General Kyrylo Budanov, told The Globe that all of the special-forces units at his disposal had been fighting full-tilt for the past six months, and that he had no available reserves. “The lack of personnel is palpable,” he said in an interview at HUR’s Kyiv headquarters.
Russia’s existing manpower edge has been exacerbated by the arrival of some 11,000 North Korean troops who have joined the war on the Russian side, fighting in Kursk region of Russia, which is under partial Ukrainian occupation. The looming return to the White House of Donald Trump – who repeatedly criticized U.S. military aid to Ukraine during the election campaign – has added to the sense that the international situation is tipping in Moscow’s favour.
That North Korean deployment has enabled Russia to slowly push back the Ukrainian troops stationed in Kursk without pulling soldiers away from the war’s main front in Donbas.
When The Globe visited the front-line Donbas city of Pokrovsk on Sunday, the sounds of battle were far louder than two months earlier, with at least one Russian shell landing in the city centre during the brief visit. Though Russian forces were still several kilometres outside Pokrovsk – and both sides were preparing for urban warfare – Ukrainian military engineers could be seen rapidly building new defensive lines north and west of the city in preparation for its possible fall.
On Monday, Ukrainian military spokesperson Vladyslav Voloshyn said there were signs that a separate large-scale Russian offensive could begin on the southern Zaporizhzhia front “any day now.” Thursday saw reports – disputed by the Ukrainian military – of a Russian breakthrough on yet another front, toward the city of Kupyansk in the eastern Kharkiv region.
There’s increasing bitterness in Kyiv over the West’s passive response to North Korea joining the war – condemning it but doing nothing to counter it – and the restrictions on how Ukraine uses Western-supplied weapons. While the Biden administration is reportedly planning to ship Ukraine US$6-billion in military assistance ahead of Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January, that has only added to the sense that Ukraine may soon have to stand virtually alone.
“We don’t have any official allies. Russia has allies, and they fulfill their duties as allies,” Lt-Gen Budanov said, adding that he would judge Mr. Trump on his actions after taking office, rather than his campaign rhetoric. “We really hope that the countries of the West will eventually become our official allies.”
The fighters taking the war to Russia each night can feel the situation worsening. “We have to be realistic. If we rely on Western weapons – I don’t know the percentage, but it’s huge – and rely on Western funds, we at least have to have agreement with the West,” Most says. “With Donald Trump, we have to at least accept the reality that we can’t fight with stones and sticks.”
But peace also feels distant, despite Mr. Trump’s talk of forcing a rapid end to the war once he takes office. Evrei compares Ukraine’s current situation to that of a dog fighting a bear, charging ahead despite the odds. “We don’t know how to win, but we also don’t know how to surrender.”
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Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukraine’s President, spoke with The Globe this summer as the military’s big push into Russia took the war into a new phase. On The Decibel, Janice Dickson shared highlights from that interview. Subscribe for more episodes.