Ukraine’s drone forces launch strikes deep behind Russian lines

In a cornfield in eastern Ukraine, soldiers unpacked small strike drones from crates, programmed them on laptops, spun up the propellers with electric screwdrivers and fired them into the sky with a slingshot-like launcher. The improvised setup captured how Ukraine’s war has moved far beyond trenches and artillery duels into a contest of low-cost precision attacks aimed at Russian forces deep behind the front line.

The unit carrying out the launches belonged to the 1st Center of Unmanned Aerial Systems in Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. Its commander, who used the call sign Kyt, said the mission set focused on enemy bases in the field, ammunition depots and air-defense systems. The target set extends well into the rear, with so-called middle strikes reaching roughly 30 to 180 kilometers behind the front line, areas that once offered Russian units a relative sense of security.

Ukraine has made those attacks a central part of its battlefield strategy. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in May that strikes at ranges of more than 20 kilometers had doubled compared with March and quadrupled since February, adding, “And there will be even more.” Ukrainian officials say the goal is to make the enemy’s rear no longer a safe haven by disrupting logistics, communications and military movement before they can support assaults at the front.

The effort has also drawn new money. Mykhailo Fedorov announced an additional 5 billion hryvnias, about $113 million, for the most effective middle-strike units. He described the rear areas as losing their protection, saying, “The enemy’s rear is no longer a safe haven.” The Ministry of Defence, together with the General Staff, has also allocated the same amount directly to military units for modern middle-strike systems, underscoring how quickly the campaign has moved from improvised innovation to institutional priority.

The scale of the campaign is beginning to show in the wider war. Ukraine has flown hundreds of these missions, and an open-source map by DeepState showed Russia capturing only about 50 square kilometers in May. Analysts said the strikes have hit air defenses, radars, logistics nodes, ammunition depots, command posts, communications infrastructure and large military vehicles. They have also affected transport arteries such as the M-14 route linking Rostov-on-Don, Mariupol, Crimea and other occupied areas, complicating Russian supply lines and troop movement.

For Ukraine, the lesson is clear: agility and cheap systems can offset shortages in conventional firepower. For Russia, the rear has become another front line, and one that is increasingly harder to defend.