At a secret location in southern Ukraine, Roman Kostenko watched a drone rise into the sky. It ascended to a height of 100 metres, buzzing above a field of yellow rapeseed. The drone dropped a dummy anti-tank grenade on to a pile of tyres. The test worked. That night Kostenko’s team repeated the exercise over occupied territory. Two bombs fell on a Russian armoured fighting vehicle. It blew up, smoke pluming into the darkness.
Kostenko, a decorated special forces colonel, said his unit had destroyed dozens of Russian military objects, including tanks and howitzer guns. These operations took place every night on “a tactical level”, he said, close to the frontline. This stretches for 900 miles (1.450km), from the eastern city of Bakhmut where Ukrainian troops launched a local counterattack this week, to the southern provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
