Ukraine: Living Under Drone Attack

Welcome to IWPR’s Frontline Update, your go-to source to hear from journalists and local voices at the front lines of conflict.

 THE BIG PICTURE  

As Russia targets Ukraine with a unprecedented wave of drone attacks – with more than 700 launched in one night alone - we hear from IWPR staff and contributors what it’s like to live under fire.

 VOICES FROM THE FRONTLINE 

“The noise is terrible; the drones sound like motorbikes, and then are the explosions as our mobile brigades shoot them down, with spotlights tracing through the sky,” said Katya Laba, IWPR’s Kyiv-based Ukraine project manager.

“It is something you can only understand if you have experienced it – night after night without sleep, debating whether to stay at home or go to the shelter, with no respite,” added Olga Golovina, longtime IWPR contributor, describing recent nights in Kyiv as “intensely stressful”.

The relentless strain took its toll, explained IWPR Ukraine country director Maryna Bezkorovaina in an analysis this week.

“Every night feels like a gamble; going to bed, you don't know if you will wake in the morning, or if you will be spared, but another poor soul fall victim.”

WHY IT MATTERS 

The war in Ukraine has been described as the first to be fought largely by drones; Kyiv is now both buying and manufacturing more than two million a year.

“When you are fighting a war of survival, and your enemy outnumbers you in both military personnel and hardware, you are forced to get creative,” Bezkorovaina wrote. “Ukraine's drone warfare capabilities have evolved from improvised solutions to a comprehensive strategic weapons system that challenges traditional military paradigms.”

But Russia is also keeping pace with this still experimental form of warfare, and those on the ground in Kyiv witness the difference.

“I can tell now that attacks are more focused than they were at the beginning of the war, sometimes they surround us from every direction,” Laba said. “They also approach at a higher height that the air defence cannot reach so easily. If they are not intercepted the result can be devastating, and even if they miss they rain down debris which can cause damage and fires.”

 THE BOTTOM LINE 

Drones for both reconnaissance and combat play an ever-larger role in conflict. Any state or civilian can buy and use them; and they have begun to serve as a gamechanger, such as in Nagorny Karabakh when Azerbaijan’s use of combat drones definitively changed the balance of power.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, IWPR has reported on how the use of drones has been central to Moscow’s strategy as well as tracking Ukraine’s evolving response.

But it’s the toll on ordinary people of this rapidly developing method of modern warfare that needs to remain front and centre. “The psychological impact is terrible,” said Laba. “For more than two years now I have shared a bed with my child, so that if we die, we die together.”

Amid the increasing mechanisation of war, it is accurate and responsible reporting that tells the human story.