The former café of Anatoly Tokarev in Pavlograd is more than just a museum. The accumulation of objects, thousands of them stacked in several rooms, could be understood as a catalog of the evolution of the wars that have ravaged Ukrainian territory over the last century.
It houses swords from the Tsarist era, weaponry used during World War II, or the latest gadgets that have appeared on the front lines.
Tokarev stops at the remains of a Russian drone, a Molniya. "Look, it weighs nothing. It is made of plastic, foam, and aluminum," he explains.
This is one of the many types of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) that Tokarev displays in his collection. From a towering Shaheed to small FPV (explosive-laden kamikaze drones). All interspersed with armored vehicles, remnants of rockets of all calibers, mines and anti-tank missiles, uniforms, or flags.
"I started collecting these things in 2014," says the 67-year-old Ukrainian, nicknamed the Grandfather.
When asked how he lost the four fingers missing from his hand, Tokarev responds with that enigmatic style he likes to surround himself with: "I ate them," he says with a smile.
Tokarev is a veteran of the war in Ukraine. He volunteered in 2014 and participated in the most significant confrontations of that phase of the conflict. The museum is also filled with photos he took in places like the Donetsk airport -Tokarev is one of the famous Cyborgs, the Ukrainian soldiers who resisted the Russian siege there-, the contested village of Pisky, or Debaltseve.
On the ground of the premises, he has deliberately placed -"it is mandatory to step on them," he says- the flags of the eight supposed pro-Russian "republics," whose secession Moscow promoted in 2014. Of all of them, only Luhansk and Donetsk remain. "In Pavlograd, the separatists lasted half an hour. We kicked them out," Tokarev adds.
A veteran of a thousand close encounters with death, the Ukrainian admits that the battles he fought in those days with the Russian troops and their allies have little to do with the new way of waging war. "It is preferable that we now use robots because people's lives are much more valuable," he points out.
His outlook on the future of the conflict is not optimistic. The Russians are still 70 kilometers from Pavlograd, but the sense of security that distance once provided -once an abyss- has begun to fade due to the transformation the conflagration has undergone.
"The Russians have already advanced almost 20 kilometers into the Dnipropetrovsk province (to which his city belongs). Soon Pavlograd will become another Pokrovsk (the city in the east of the country where a bloody battle has been raging for months)," he opines.
The perception of a character as well-versed in these matters as Tokarev coincides with that of most analysts, who have been warning for months about the radical transformation that the war in Ukraine has undergone, setting a precedent for understanding conflicts.
As the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote last August, "the use of airpower (by Russia) to attack targets in the rear of the front line" has had an "impact on battlefield operations."
What was previously understood as the front line has begun to be an ambiguous concept. Replaced by a more somber expression: zones of death. A strip that can extend between 10 and 30 kilometers beyond the positions of each army, where drones choose their "victims." Notions like rear area have also ceased to mean the same thing.
"Russian forces are restricting Ukrainian movements with unmanned aerial vehicles. Some Ukrainian sources observed that the death zone was 500 meters to two kilometers in 2024, but it has since increased considerably due to drone innovations," the text added.
Under the new dynamics of war, trenches have been almost emptied, as they are too obvious a target, replaced by small hidden shelters where groups of 2 or 3 soldiers take cover. The same is done by drone units, which camouflage themselves in basements or earth-dug cavities, often changing locations frequently, as they are one of the most sought-after places by their adversaries.
The harassment of UAVs in these locations is so suffocating that sometimes soldiers are forced to relieve themselves in buckets or bottles to avoid going outside and exposing themselves.
Supplying troops in the most exposed locations has become a challenge that requires the assistance of robots. Just like evacuating the wounded. The development of these ground drones is still in its infancy, but they are increasingly in demand by the troops.
"It is better to use robots; people are worth much more than a machine," Tokarev agrees, even though he was always an infantryman.
Uniformed personnel have also begun to transport logistics with aerial cargo drones since any shipment by traditional means -trucks or off-road vehicles- is now an almost suicidal journey. The most daring venture on these trips only at night, without lights, using night vision goggles.
In some localities like Pokrovsk, soldiers have to walk kilometers and kilometers protected by specialized uniformed personnel "hunting" drones with shotguns to transport this logistics or replace their comrades.
"The Russians, for example, are increasingly using thermal ponchos, which allow them to be invisible to night vision goggles as they conceal their body temperature. They use gloves and masks of the same type," explains Mikhailo Artist Vovk, from the 102nd Territorial Defense Brigade.
Just as with aerial UAVs, which popularized schools for pilots of these devices, military units like the Third Assault Brigade have begun to create their own schools for training operators of ground robots, which started operating in March and has already trained over 600 operators of these devices.
"The future belongs to autonomous systems and artificial intelligence," declared the head of that center to the local publication NV.
All the elements that defined classic warfare, such as tanks or heavy artillery, have had to retreat or act at specific moments: they fire their projectiles and evacuate the area hastily before drones locate and eliminate them. Armored assaults are now a rarity. Last week, this reporter was able to observe in Donbass the action of the famous Himars batteries, delivered by the US to the Ukrainian army. The vehicle made two launches, and immediately one of the soldiers jumped off the platform to collect all the electronic devices deployed in the area and speed away in the opposite direction.
Aware of the radical shift in the rules of warfare, the Ukrainians were the first army in the world to establish a new branch of the armed forces called Unmanned Systems Forces in June of last year, which brings together units of ground, aerial, and maritime drones.
However, it has been the Russians who have taken advantage of this phase to advance on almost all fronts since the beginning of the year, not only in Donbass -the scene of the most entrenched struggle- but also in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk or Zaporizhia.
The conversion of drones like the aforementioned Molniya -the one Tokarev exhibits in Pavlograd- which have gone from being decoy devices used to distract anti-aircraft defenses to cheap vehicles loaded with several kilos of explosives and a range of over 50 kilometers, has expanded the arc of threat.
The ISW also warned in the same analysis last August that it is more than "possible that future adaptations of drones will render traditional electronic warfare and air defense countermeasures ineffective." The think tank admitted that the Russians have "a current technological advantage".