Oleksandre, camouflage cap on his head and small neat beard, wears only an anthracite clutch.

The thirty-year-old soldier is the commander of an air support unit for the fifth brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Its mission is to fly drones over Bakhmut, the epicenter of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in the east of the country and the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

When he's not on a mission, Oleksandre trains or tinkers with his devices.

"We carry out both reconnaissance and surveillance, we identify the enemy and we can escort the assault groups," he explains, clearing the branches of the take-off zone with the tip of his foot.

The use of drones has become essential to the point that on days of poor visibility, artillery pieces remain largely silent so as not to waste ammunition.

Russian gift

"Before, to adjust a mortar fire, you needed a surveyor posted on a hill, with a tripod, binoculars... He had to give the correction angles to the gunner, now, thanks to the drone, the person directing the shot adjusts it in real time," Oleksandr explains.

A truth also valid for the other side, so much so that the dronistes are also working to neutralize Russian drones.

Ukrainian soldier Oleksandru, drone pilot and commander of an air support unit for the fifth brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, on April 7, 2023 at a training camp, near Bakhmut © Genya SAVILOV / AFP

Viktor uses a large briefcase containing an interceptor. He points to his screen with a carnivorous smile: "Look, we see them all! The Mavic and the others! All drones."

He is all the more pleased that the device he uses is a "gift from the Russians". It is "a war catch! In Ukraine, we do not manufacture such a machine, we have stung the enemy."

Oleksandre insists that there is nothing easy in these dronist units where you have to show ingenuity, tinker to succeed in your mission.

"It's a big job, the operator has to know everything. How to maximize the range of his aircraft, how to create a take-off point on complicated terrain, dig his trench, hide his presence ...", lists the officer.

And "you can't be a dronist by accident. You have to be a handyman," he adds.

Indeed, the drones of the Ukrainian army are often models from the trade. It is therefore first necessary to hack their software to "make them invisible to the Russian radio-surveillance", explains the dronist, showing his device of about twenty centimeters that fits in the pocket.

The young thirty-year-old also modifies his devices so that they can drop grenades or improvised explosives.

Revenge of the geeks

For this, 3D printed clamps are attached "to the photovoltaic cell of the drone, it is activated from the joystick, the motor removes the pin by which the grenade holds. It falls and that's it!"

If the technique is acquired today, this has not always been the case. At first "we groped, we used the battery of vapoteuses of soldiers to power the clamp system for grenades," says Oleksandre.

Ukrainian soldier Oleksandru, drone pilot and commander of an air support unit for the fifth brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, on April 7, 2023 at a training camp, near Bakhmut © Genya SAVILOV / AFP

He remembers his first success. Three months after grabbing the remote control for the first time, he managed to destroy an MT-12 Rapira anti-tank gun by dropping a grenade.

Casualties, however, remain high, says the soldier, estimating at a hundred the number of drones lost on the battlefield.

The one he holds there is decked out with the word "Kamikaze" in kanji, the name of Japanese pilots carrying out suicide missions during the Second World War.

According to him, it is thanks in particular to the dronists, that Bakhmout still holds.

"The attacks of the (paramilitary group) Wagner on Bakhmut were repelled mainly thanks to drones dropping grenades," Oleksandre said of a vague movement towards the front line, where outnumbered Ukrainians have been resisting human waves for months.

"It's kind of geeks' revenge," he says.

© 2023 AFP