Ukraine-Russia conflict: Australians discover drones inflicting ‘insane amounts of violence’ on frontline

An Australian businessman and an online activist went to the front line in Ukraine this week on a mission: to understand the future of war. What they witnessed could have been from a science fiction movie, and the trenches of World War I.

While US President Donald Trump tries to negotiate a ceasefire, combat has not abated along the 400km front. The two Australians, Robert Potter and Drew Pavlou, hid in a trench from an enemy drone and were in an area shot at by a T-72 tank.

In a secret headquarters bunker for Ukraine’s drone force, they watched on dozens of monitors as drones hunted down Russian and North Korean soldiers.

“There were insane amounts of violence,” said Mr Potter, the managing director of Cyber Activities Group, a private company researching drone warfare in Ukraine on behalf of the US Department of Defence.

Rise of the jammers

Since Mr Potter last went to the front, in October, he said there have been two big technological developments: electronic jammers are almost everywhere, but they cannot defeat fibre-optic controlled drones, which have become common across the front.

Almost every military vehicle Mr Potter saw had jamming equipment. Many individual trenches did too. Both sides are in a race to develop jammers light enough to be carried by individual soldiers, Mr Potter said.

To counter jammers, the Russians and Ukrainians send out bomb-carrying drones controlled by thin, silica glass wires similar to those which deliver high-speed internet to Australian homes.

But fibre optic drones will not win the war; they aren’t as manoeuvrable as other types, and suffer from shorter ranges, Mr Potter said.

The internet-security entrepreneur allowed Mr Pavlou to accompany him because the pro-Ukrainian student activist has amassed a large online following and there are no Australian journalists based in the war-torn country, he said.

Bunker headquarters

On Wednesday, with Australia’s ambassador to Ukraine, Paul Lehmann, they visited a bunker operated by the Ukrainian drone force, a new branch of the military, according to Mr Potter.

Never in history have military commanders had such visibility over their wars. The drone force operates a computer network called Eye that allows its leaders to see the footage from hundreds drones airborne at any time across the whole country. Individual soldiers can see what drones nearby can see.

Ukrainian soldiers leave much of the fighting to drones, which can inflict up to 90 per cent of the casualties in some battles, Mr Potter said. They protect themselves with shotguns and assault rifles.

“It’s like World War I -- every one is waiting for the artillery,” to attack the enemy, he said. “They are incredibly terrifying. The noise is incredibly traumatic.”

Hiding in a trench

The drones have become so important to the war that their pilots are higher-priority targets than tanks or artillery, the men were told.

Near the town of Pokrovrsk in Eastern Ukraine, one of the Australians’ military guards detected a drone nearby and pulled Mr Potter into a trench, where they cowered for about 90 minutes until they could be sure its battery had run out.

The Australians visited Kherson in the south too, where Russians hunt Ukrainian civilians from the other side of the Dnipro River. The Russians film the attacks, which they call “human safaris,” and post the killings on the internet.

“I walked through street after street of abandoned buildings - it was extremely eerie, like walking through a post-apocalyptic setting,” Mr Pavlou wrote on social media. “The only sounds were the crunch of shattered glass underfoot and the far off thunder of Russian guns.”

Not ceasing fire

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday refused to support an immediate cease fire proposed by the US, which he said would be in Ukraine’s interest because Russian forces are advancing.

“The idea itself is good, and we of course support it, but there are questions we have to discuss,” Mr Putin said.

Mr Trump, who has put great pressure on the Ukrainians to reach a peace deal, said the Russians’ response was “promising ... but it wasn’t complete.”

“I’d love to meet with him and talk to him, but we have to get it over with fast,” Mr Trump said.

The Ukrainian government recently said the Russian offensive in the east had stalled. The Russian military said on Thursday it had retaken Sudzha, the biggest town held by Ukraine in the Kursk region, a part of Russian that Ukraine invaded last year.

From Mr Potter’s perspective, both sides are exhausted by the three-year-old war.

“No one is winning,” he said.