Cheap but lethally accurate weapon from Alibaba

Almost two years after Vladimir Putin’s all-out invasion, Ukraine has abandoned its offensive. Instead it is employing a strategy of active defence: keeping the Russians back, and waging the occasional counter-punch. Moscow, meanwhile, wants to go forward. 

The difficulties experienced by Russia in Synkivka point to a wider problem facing both armies. “It’s a war of armour against projectiles. At the moment projectiles are winning,” Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator  said. The Russians had some tactical success, flushing out Ukrainian soldiers from the forest and a few villages. But a significant breakthrough was almost impossible, he said, in an era of cheap and lethally accurate drones.

The result of Ukraine and Russia’s extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a kind of warfare that makes traditional Nato doctrine “pretty much obsolete”, Molchanov said. First-person view kamikaze drones cost $400 (£315) each. They are bought from the online Chinese marketplace Alibaba, he said. “Nobody really knows how to advance right now. Everything gets smashed up by drones and artillery,” he said.

“It’s really fu**cked up down there,”  Molchanov said, showing video he took from above the battlefield four miles north-east of the city of Kupiansk. The images are gruesome. Bodies can be seen lying in a zig-zag trench and frozen hollows. Nearby are the burnt-out carcasses of BMP-1 fighting vehicles, at least 10 of them. Despite this, the Russians keep trying.