Ukraine turns to machines to spare troops from drone-infested ‘grey zone’

 The crack of a Ukrainian howitzer splits the air, mingling with the rumble of thunder. Then there is another sharp blast, followed by a sound like shredding paper as a Himars missile roars overhead.

Unfazed by the orchestra of war, a Ukrainian electrician continues repairing a power cable severed during Russian shelling.

But as he works, a less familiar sound signals a new threat: the insistent beep of a drone monitor. Even here – in a village on the outskirts of the front line in the eastern city of Pokrovsk – Russian surveillance and strike drones now maintain a constant presence.

“Keep your eyes on the sky and listen,” says Vitaliy Asinenko, a regional chief at DTEK Donetsk Grids, looking up at the lead-grey clouds.

Artillery his men are used to; you hope it’s aimed elsewhere and take your chances. But if one of the drones circling overhead decides to target the crew, they will have little chance of survival.

In his hand, Vitaliy clutches the drone monitor, a £200 device first handed to employees last autumn. Its beeps - now sporadic - will become a single, high-pitched scream if a drone approaches, providing seconds of warning to take cover.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become ever-present more than 10km behind the trenches in both directions, making the front line perilously difficult to reach, or leave. In response, Kyiv’s military planners are attempting to reduce the amount of men sent through this lethal “grey zone” and replace them, where possible, with machines.

But DTEK power company’s work regularly takes it into the zone.

To reach the damaged cables, Vitaliy drives in his armoured Land Cruiser and instructs The Telegraph to be ready to jump out of the door. “There is a surveillance drone 400m from the car,” he says, as the beeps from the monitor get louder. “It’s following us.”

The car turns into a corridor of anti-drone netting that has been recently erected over the “road of death” into Poksrovsk, the city at the crux of Russia’s summer offensive. The webbing is flimsy, albeit strong enough to entangle a light drone before it explodes.

By the side of the road, soldiers fix a gap made by a recent artillery strike as one watches the sky with an anti-drone gun.

UAVs – be it suicide, bomber or fibre-optic – cause around 70 per cent of all casualties in the war in Ukraine. Troops can no longer be safely transported to their positions inside armoured vehicles, a point one soldier illustrates with images of wrecked MaxxPro MRAPs on his phone.

In one of the pictures, a charred torso lies face down in the blackened dust, arms flung into the air either side of its helmet. Evacuation is equally perilous and infantry now spend longer in their dugouts, unwilling to risk any journey unless it is absolutely necessary.

In Dobropillia, one of the last towns en route to Pokrovsk, soldiers in uniform relax in cafes beyond the reach of the drones. A recruitment billboard shows the pilot of a first-person-view (FPV) drone standing back-to-back with an Iron Man-like robot, shielded by armour on all sides. “We will give you the innovations to stop the enemy,” promises the 1st brigade.

While soldiers who used to fire stingers or mortars retrain as drone pilots, Kyiv is also pioneering the use of robots that can travel across the ground, delivering supplies, retrieving the dead and, on occasion, carrying out attacks.

“We need to replace soldiers with robots,” Col Pavlo Khazan told his superiors in a 2023 presentation. Ukraine, he argued, could not match Russia’s recruitment level, which is now around 8,000 soldiers per month. Nor does it treat its men like “cans of meat” to be frittered away in suicidal assaults.

One general told him he had ideas above his station, but the principle was endorsed by Gen Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army.

Today, drones mean that fewer men are needed to hold the line on parts of the front, says Col Khazan, a former unmanned systems commander now serving in the field of electronic warfare. “My grandfather used to be an artilleryman in the Second World War,” he adds. “I have deep respect for the artillery and infantry.”

But drones are cheaper than artillery and require fewer operators. “We are well on the way” to an army of machines, he says, speculating on a future where drone swarms – not men – bear the brunt of assaults.

On his last deployment, Ivan walked 8km (4.9 miles) to his position. The unit travelled at dawn, hoping to avoid the Russian drone pilots, who he says “work mostly at night”. The team crept through the flat, tree-lined landscape, around 10 metres apart. Any closer would have made them an easy target; any further apart risks the lives of the wounded. The march was heart-pounding.

Not far from his dugout, the 21-year-old machine gunner with the Da Vinci Wolves set up an automatic MK19 grenade launcher. “We killed two a few days ago,” he says in between drags of a cigarette. The commander spotted a Russian advance and told the unit to raise their drone. Watching on his monitor, Ivan clicked on the soldiers’ heads and the gun fired two 40mm grenades. “Pof,” he says, slapping his skull emphatically. At the beginning of the war, the MK19 had a margin of error of 20 metres but with the drone it is more precise.

“If I tell you [why I’m in this unit], they’ll definitely say video games cause violence,” Ivan says with a smile before listing his favourites: Minecraft, Stalker, World of Tanks. His friends have joined the same unit, which specialises in robotic platforms. “We drank. We signed up. I’m standing here,” he says, gesturing to a dark hangar full of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVSs). He will return to the front next week.

Ukraine has stabilised the lines around Pokrovsk since the turn of the year. The Russian army, blocked at the entrance to the city, is attempting a pincer movement. Magyar’s Birds, one of Ukraine’s elite drone units, has helped to slow their advances by picking off troops and supply lines up to 20km (12.4 miles) behind the front.

Earlier this month, Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, the newly promoted commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces, reorganised the reward system for confirmed kills to prioritise Russian drone operators. But Vladimir Putin is expected to throw more resources at the city, which would give Moscow a crucial foothold in its attempt to seize the entire Donetsk region.

As the DTEK electricians work in the village near Pokrovsk, a group of residents gather by the roadside. Only 300 remain from a pre-war population 10 times the size. Most lack the funds to flee. Without electricity, the villagers are unable to draw clean water from their well. Food is scarce.

On the other side of the road, a graveyard stretches through un-mown grass that rustles in the wind. Ambulance services and undertakers will not come here, so residents are forced to bury the dead themselves. Makeshift wooden crosses mark the more recent graves.

“It’s nerve-wracking,” says a tall, thin man in a gilet and black tracksuit. “There was a time when there weren’t any drones, but now they’re here every single day.” Only last week, a team of five Russian saboteurs was killed in the village.

One of the DTEK employees is up a ladder resting against a pylon when – around 10 minutes after Ukrainian fire – the Russians launch a return volley. Four whoomphs can be heard in succession. “Guided bombs,” mutters Vitaliy, “closer and closer”.

“Can you see the mushroom clouds?” he asks the worker up the ladder, who pokes his head up to take a look. “No,” he replies. Unlike last Thursday, they will not have to abandon the job and take cover. At a nearby substation, the power to the village is turned on again. “On to the next one,” says Vitaliy, opening the car door to listen as another Himars flies overhead.