A woman appears on her knees next to her wounded husband whose head is bandaged but is bleeding to death. There are no other civilians in sight. A few minutes earlier, the car in which they were traveling to rescue their mother from the besieged city of Bakhmut is struck by a sudden burst of fire. Russian soldiers hide several meters away, between the trees, and they shoot at everyone they see, from the cannon of their armored infantry vehicle. Suddenly, the woman hears a noise and looks up. A drone hovers over her. Someone is watching you. She begs the drone to help her, pointing at her husband, or, perhaps, she begs it not to kill her. He has no way of knowing which side the drone belongs to.
The drone finally leaves. When he returns several minutes later, he is carrying a handwritten sign on a piece of paper: “Follow me!”. The woman hesitates briefly and begins walking with her back to the unseen threat as the drone slowly moves away from her vehicle. Her husband unaware of her stays behind. The woman hopes to find help and come back for him later. She immediately meets a Ukrainian soldier. She is saved. But she cannot return to the place to save her husband since the Russians have thrown him into a ditch believing that he is dead. But by some miracle, she survives. She spends the night in the open and in the morning she walks towards the Ukrainian positions.
This true story illustrates how drones can help save lives. The Ukrainian Police also hopes that the images collected by an unmanned device toHelp build a war crimes case by Russian troops. “Hundreds of cases like these have occurred in Ukraine. In Donetsk, Kharkiv, near Kyiv. However, only a few were captured in such detail,” says a police officer at a press conference.
There are many other videos that are captured by drones. In most of them, they help save lives on one side while They serve to destroy the invader. Dozens of videos can be seen online where grenades are dropped from a drone onto a soldier or under an armored vehicle to destroy it.
The soldiers try to fight enemy drones but it’s nearly impossible to shoot one down with an ordinary firearm. Anti-drone rifles and radio-electronic means of counterattack are used, but they are not always effective. “Sometimes there are three or four drones in the sky at the same time above us. Often there is no way to tell which one is ours and which one is Russian,” says Ali, the first name of a drone operator who has been fighting in Bakhmut for the past few months.
Ali starts his journey at dawn and stays at his post until dark.
The importance of these “wedding drones,” as they are sometimes called because of their common use in civilian life, cannot be overstated. Directing them can be extremely dangerous. Drone operators are pursued by enemy artillery, routinely targeting places they know they may be. “In such cases, I have to jump to a safe place and at the same time guide my drone to a safe place to avoid losing itAli explains.
He assures that the Chinese civilian drones, purchased for several thousand euros, are key to the efficiency and survival of the troops. “It is extremely important to have them in the air because we can see what our enemy is doing. It also helps to use our limited artillery ammunition more efficiently as we tell our artillery units if they are being accurate and help them hit their targets.”
Their presence in the Ukrainian Army is ensured by hundreds of crowdfunding efforts, in which individual Ukrainians and companies raise money to buy them and give them to soldiers. Those with thermal vision devices are especially valuable, as they can help warn of an impending attack by a Russian infantry group even at night.
The drone concept includes a wide variety of unmanned flying vehicles, from the smallest or cardboard ones to the most sophisticated and the size of a small plane, capable of hitting enemy targets, for example at Russian military airports or bases in Crimea. . Russia has used cheap kamikaze drones designed by Iran to damage Ukraine’s power grid. No matter the model, the role of drones is becoming more important in the war and the side that has the most will have a clear advantage on the ground.
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