‘Long-range sanctions’: Ukraine hopes strikes cause Russia fear and losses
Al Jazeera is given rare access to one of Ukraine’s long-range drone units tasked with targeting Russia. Eastern Ukraine – In a farm field in
Al Jazeera is given rare access to one of Ukraine’s long-range drone units tasked with targeting Russia. Eastern Ukraine – In a farm field in eastern Ukraine, a choking engine interrupts the sound of crickets and nightingales. Then come indistinguishable shouts of male voices, followed by a crescendo – a loud sound like scissors tearing through wrapping paper. It pierces the night as a brief flare of flame illuminates the sunflower field below. “Like an orchestra, every part has to work together in order for us to achieve effective strikes,” says Colonel Ray, commander of the Kairos Battalion of the Magyars Birds Brigade. The drone, roughly the length of a compact SUV with a wingspan of nearly 6 metres (19.7 feet), climbs into the night. Where exactly it is headed is known only to him. Before reaching its target, the drone will travel at about 160km/h (100mph), thousands of metres above the ground, passing over the bombarded cities and battlefields along Ukraine’s front line. Once it reaches cruising altitude, control is handed over to a command centre elsewhere in Ukraine. “You could pilot it from Pennsylvania once it’s up there,” the brigade’s spokesperson says, explaining how the drones navigate using satellite systems.
Scaling up Along its journey, the drone is careful to avoid towns and cities where it risks being intercepted. Data on Russian air defences is fed back to planners, helping give the hundreds of drones Ukraine now launches on some nights the best possible chance of making it through. Lately, Ukraine’s long-range drones are striking targets sometimes more than 2,500km (1,553 miles) inside Russia, reaching cities like Moscow and St Petersburg, across the Ural Mountains and even into Siberia. Their targets include oil refineries, factories and warehouses. While long-range drones are not new to the war, the scale of their use has changed. Ukraine now produces its own one-way attack drones by the hundreds, allowing it to cut through red tape from Western partners that once prevented it from striking deep into Russia. When it began ramping up such attacks in March, some Western allies urged restraint. The US-Israel war on Iran had already disrupted global energy markets, and Ukraine’s increasing attacks on Russian energy infrastructure have threatened to add further pressure. But Kyiv kept going. Ukrainian officials began calling the strikes “long-range sanctions”, a tongue-in-cheek way of arguing that Kyiv was enforcing, through drones, the economic pressure Western sanctions had failed to deliver.
The BriefWire