A solitary figure appears on one of the monitors, walking at a leisurely pace alongside a line of trees, in the gray morning, advancing towards the destroyed city of Pokrovsk. Along the way, he leaves behind the bodies of comrades who fell before him, whom he doesn't even want to look at. The drone's resolution is so precise that we can see his expression, the backpack loaded with supplies, the weapon on his back, his muddy boots, without him even realizing we are watching him. If we didn't know it was the new strategy of the Kremlin, sending their soldiers one by one to infiltrate Ukrainian lines, we would say the guy has gone crazy.
We are in a rural building that until a few weeks ago was used to store farming tools. In front of us is a wall of screens, communication devices, helmets, bulletproof vests, weapons captured from the Russians, boxes of ammunition, and a coffee thermos. At the controls of this Millennium Falcon of war sits a former lawyer - hence his war name - who now acts as the angel of death, that is, as the coordinator of the drone teams participating in the battle of Pokrovsk, whose smell of burnt city we can taste. The rules are the same as always: airplane mode on the phone and no photographing the screens.
We are welcomed in a village near the front, desolate and semi-destroyed, by the Gostry Kartuzy, or translated, the Peaky Blinders, one of the most famous (and lethal) drone units in the war in Ukraine. All its members wear flat caps in the style of the Shelby brothers, but with multicam camouflage fabric. "You can't photograph the screens, because they would give away our position," says Olexander Spitsyn, war name Zaliznyak, leader of this strange band of brothers composed only of a group of old friends from Kharkiv and founded by his brother Anton, who died in combat.
But now all the attention in the room and in the rest of the positions is focused on that soldier advancing alone. "It's routine for them. They try to infiltrate their people all the time," says Lawyer. "We've already taken out a few on this route, but they keep sending them through the same place," he adds, while contacting his units near that soldier using the usual battery of unrepeatable curses and military jargon. "We have a pidar [faggot, a common insult to refer to the Russians] walking towards the anti-tank ditch. Who's taking care of him?"
In a few seconds, one of them responds, and on another screen to his right, one of the operators shows us the first-person image of the attack, in real time. The kamikaze drone searches for its target like a predator. The radio crackles with nervous messages. "I see him!", someone shouts on the other end of the line. When we spot the Russian soldier in front of the drone, he hears the sinister whirring of the propellers chasing him. We then see his panicked face, with wide-open eyes. He tries to run towards the trees to hide. The drone follows him, but hits a branch and explodes.
The Russian soldier has been saved for now, but again the spy drone detects him from above. Now more devices join the hunt. The man runs with all his might, looks up in desperation, and runs away again. We can see his face, how he struggles to breathe, how he tries to hide. "Throw a grenade at him," Lawyer orders another operator. The Russian moves again as the explosive falls and detonates a few meters from him. The prey now remains still. "Is he dead?" asks the operator from his position. "I'm going to check with thermal vision," says Lawyer. Then, the screen changes from color to monochrome.
The man, under a tree, emits a white heat signature among the gray of the forest. "He's alive, but he's playing dead. Finish him off". A second grenade falls, and this time it doesn't miss. Both Lawyer and Zaliznyak shout in unison like Real Madrid fans celebrating a Mbappé goal. "Davaiblyat!" ("Let's go, damn it!"). Lawyer sees our astonished faces, fascinated and terrified, because it's the fifth death we witness in real time in just an hour and only in a small fraction of the front, full of corpses lying face up. "These won't dance anymore," he says, shrugging to end the matter, like the official who efficiently handles the day's affairs.
- Does this tactic work for the Russians?
- They don't care about the number of dead because they send soldiers morning, afternoon, and night, sometimes through well-watched annihilation zones. Most of them we locate and kill quickly. Very few manage to arrive, but in the end, they consolidate positions.
We can't continue the conversation because one of the panels of the War's Big Brother in front of us has lit up in red, which means that once again, something is moving. Another Russian soldier is trying to infiltrate, this time near a lake. The drones buzz towards the target, who tries to hide in a hole where, attention, there is another Russian hidden from a previous attempt! Both try to run when detected. "Two pidars! Now there are drones from several units here", a nervous Lawyer reports, mobilizing his team via radio to prevent the prey from escaping.
The two men run frantically from side to side, with no trees to hide behind, and end up back in the same dead-end hole. A grenade falls, misses them. Another falls, also misses... but the third, from a Peaky Blinders drone pilot, takes them both down. When the smoke clears, the two lifeless bodies are visible. Once again, there is a burst of joy in the communication lines. "We've taken points from the Pájaros de Madyar and Aquiles, two units competing with us," proudly comments Zaliznyak. He refers to the gamification of war and to that kind of ranking in which Ukrainian drone pilots compete among themselves to get the best equipment provided by the Ministry of Technology of Mikhailo Fedorov. Each Russian they kill is worth 12 points. Those who score the most points receive the most modern drones. Only in September, they have eliminated 18,000 invaders recorded on video thanks to this competition.
- What would happen if they tried to surrender before going to their death in that way?
- Since we've been here, and it's been months, none have tried. We know from our Intelligence that once they leave, they can't turn back. If they try, their own people shoot them on the spot, just like in Stalin's time.
- What can you tell us about the Russian soldiers you're fighting against?
- They are strong soldiers. I can show you a video where one of our drones rips off a Russian's leg; he puts on a tourniquet and tries to shoot down our drone. Minutes later, he bleeds to death.
After witnessing a good session of war pornography, the Peaky Blinders offer us a coffee that could be signed by the best barista in Naples, next to a well-stocked fireplace and a hookah passing among those present. The conversation revolves around the act of killing, something that is done generously here. Everything boils down to the lex talionis, or the law of retaliation: an eye for an eye, with no remorse or mercy possible. Lawyer explains:
- "Do you not think that those Russian soldiers being sent to die are both victims and executioners?" -
"No, because no one has invited them to come. Most are volunteers who have enlisted for money to kill Ukrainians and loot everything."
- "What role does the propaganda they consume play in their behavior here?"
- "It's not just the propaganda. The Russian citizen will always be aggressive towards Ukraine because Russian imperialism and fascism go beyond Putin. It's something historical."
- The coffee cups are refilled several times as the sun sets and a golden light filters through the windows amidst the aromatic smoke of the hookah. The strange peace of that room, where a calm conversation about war and its consequences is shared, contrasts with the artillery detonations heard outside, making the windows vibrate.
- For a moment, those present silently remember their comrades who are currently fighting for their lives a few kilometers away, in some place in the ruins of Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, the two cities that Russia has been trying to capture for over a year before November 15, the deadline set by Putin for his generals. The difference in human resources between both armies makes the question not whether they will conquer it, but when and at what cost.
- "You have to leave now. At night, the faggots send out drones with night vision and attack cars," says Zaliznyak. We know he's not lying because we see several vehicles destroyed around us, including an old Lada belonging to a farmer. On the way back, speeding along infamous roads and looking at the sky, we receive another message from another drone operator with hundreds of confirmed deaths on his account. "I'm not a serial killer, but why are they marching towards their death?"