Inside the Lives of Ukraine’s Tired, Determined Drone Pilots
Oleksandr sits in the warm light of the kitchen with a cigarette between his fingers. He has his wife’s name tattooed on his hand. “Come in, come in,” he says, waving Yevhen to smoke with him. He and his wife, Natalia, decided to let the soldiers stay at their home for free. Their own son, Vitalii, is with infantry in one of the hottest spots of the front line, in Pokrovsk, and it comes naturally to the couple to offer a meal, a place to rest, a bit of warmth to Yevhen’s unit.
Natalia prepares potato dumplings for her husband and the soldiers.
The soldiers eat and chat with the elderly couple, but their work for the day hasn’t ended yet. They prepare equipment and upload the photos and videos collected from the drone. Throughout the evening, enemy Shahed drones buzz nearby, heading toward central Ukraine.
Late at night, a laptop screen lights Serhiy’s face as he lies in his sleeping bag, watching a movie. Yevhen, heading out for a cigarette, glances over Serhiy’s shoulder. “That’s my movie,” he says.
“I know,” Serhiy replies, grinning.
Serhiy on his laptop, with Yevhen (left) and Dmytro in the background, at Oleksander and Natalia’s house
Before the war, Yevhen was an actor. He repeatedly calls it “a different life” or “a peace life.” The war has split his life into two unrecognizable halves. Pointing at the screen where his movie plays, he says, “The director is in the army now.” Then, “That actor is in the army too. That one was killed in Kupiansk.” A pause. “And him—he’s dead too.”
Yevhen joined the army as soon as the full-scale invasion started. “Once the war ends, I would like to be an actor again,” he says. “But even if I could, I don’t know if I can shoot movies now. I have closed my mind from certain things in war. I don’t have an empathy like an actor now. Anyway, my country needs a defender now, not an actor.”
Yevhen acted in the 2021 film “Rhino,” alongside Serhii Filimonov, who is now a lieutenant in the famous Da Vinci Wolves Battalion.
In the morning, the green van speeds past the freshly dug trenches, curls of barbed wire, and lines of dragon teeth back to the stretch of trees under which the unit’s dugout hides. The trees shiver in the cold wind.
The men move through their usual routine, only today joined by a fourth member, Volodymyr. Today, the drone carries a bomb, and that changes the launch procedure. A misfire could detonate the payload, so Serhiy puts together a trebuchet powered by a car battery to catapult the drone safely into the air.
Yevhen’s unit typically outfits its drones with rocket-propelled grenade warheads, but today they use fragmentation shells. They’re submunitions salvaged from unexploded Russian cluster munition rockets. Yevhen laughs, “Russians sent them here, and they didn’t work. No problem—we’ll recycle them and send them back for refund.”
Sawed-down parts of RPGs and scattered explosives lie in the yard where the unit prepares its munitions.
In the van, a red warning flashes across the screen—incoming glide bombs. A single glide bomb can level an eight-story building. The first two land on the horizon, sending up black mushroom clouds. Then the air cracks above and the third slams into the field next to them. The blast throws dirt and shrapnel in all directions. The shock wave rattles branches, and the men sprint for the dugouts as dirt and shrapnel shower the ground.
Silence. Then Serhiy climbs out, brushing dust from his jacket. He picks up a jagged piece of shrapnel that landed less than a meter from where Yevhen was standing when the glide bombs exploded. He examines the van. “Wheels punctured?”
Yevhen glances over. “No.”
No more discussion. After years of fighting, close calls become routine. The men return to their work without a word. Serhiy checks the trebuchet tension. Dmytro confirms the drone’s systems. Yevhen gives a final nod.
“Three, two, one—launch.”
Serhiy and Volodymyr carry the trebuchet toward the edge of the field, where it will be used to launch the Pugac drone into the air.
The trebuchet snaps forward, and the drone shoots into the sky. Luckily, the clouds are high enough today. The screen shows a battlefield carved up by months of war. Below, artillery shells detonate along the front, sending thick clouds of smoke into the sky.
“We will hit the target,” Yevhen says.
Serhiy shrugs. “We will see what happens.”
“You’re not romantic.”
“I’m a realist.”
The men laugh.
On the screen, the target comes into view—a trench line tucked beneath a sparse tree line. A red square with a cross appears, locking onto the position. The drone slows down, stabilizing for the drop. The screen reads, “Seconds to drop: 3, 2, 1,” and then: “BOMB DROPPED.”
The bomb spins slightly as it falls, shrinking into the landscape below, and then an orange fireball fills the screen. The men barely react.
As soon the drone returns, they start preparing for the next launch. Tomorrow will be the same—more drone launches, another long day spent staring at screens and counting down to impact. The work is endless, but here on the front, no one expects it to be otherwise. There is no grand conclusion, no moment of finality, as long as they manage to stay alive. Just the next mission, the next drone flight, and the war that keeps going.
