Ukraine’s drone war has moved so close to the front that one of its leading commanders now describes Russian positions as “right under our feet.” The remark captures how small, lethal quadcopters and first-person-view craft have become as intimate to trench fighting as rifles and grenades, even as long-range drones strike deep inside Russia. I see that shift reshaping not only the battlefield, but also Kyiv’s military leadership, foreign partnerships, and the risks of escalation with Moscow.
‘Under our feet’ on the front line
On the eastern front, Ukraine’s drone forces commander says his pilots are engaging Russians at such close range that the targets feel almost beneath their boots. He describes elite operators flying explosive-laden drones into trenches and dugouts at distances comparable to a short walk for the average person, turning what used to be indirect fire missions into point-blank strikes. In his telling, these sorties are no longer rare special operations, but a routine part of holding and contesting roughly 30% of the front line where the heaviest fighting is concentrated.
Ukraine’s top general, Syrskyi, has called the previous year a breakthrough for this style of warfare, arguing that drones are now taking out a significant share of Russian artillery and armored vehicles. He portrays the country’s best pilots as fighting in these low-altitude duels, threading quadcopters through shell holes and tree lines to hit infantry squads that might once have been shielded by distance or darkness. When I look at that description alongside the commander’s “under our feet” remark, it suggests a battlefield where the line between reconnaissance and attack has almost vanished, and where survival depends on who can see and strike first at a range of a few hundred meters.
From Moscow’s skies to Russia’s refineries
While those close-range strikes define life in the trenches, Ukraine has also turned drones into a strategic tool that reaches far beyond the front. Russian officials say Ukraine has targeted Moscow with drones every day this year, a tempo that marks a clear escalation from earlier, more sporadic raids on the Russian capital. Kyiv argues that such attacks are aimed at disrupting military logistics and energy infrastructure, raising costs for Russia’s war effort rather than terrorizing civilians. Data cited by Reuters shows how this pattern has turned the skies over the city into a daily theater of air defense, with each interception still forcing Russia’s Def ministry to divert resources away from the front.
Behind those headline-grabbing raids lies a broader campaign against Russia’s economic lifeblood. A dedicated Ukrainian unit has built an army of long-range drones that can reach energy facilities deep inside the country, in some cases as far as hundreds of miles from the border. Those strikes have hit refineries and fuel depots, with Ukrainian officials claiming damage to a notable share of Russia’s refinery capacity, and they rely on the same mix of commercial components and improvised engineering that powers the “under our feet” drones at the front. When I connect these dots, I see a strategy that uses cheap unmanned systems to stretch Russian defenses from the trenches around Avdiivka to the industrial belts around Moscow and beyond.
Kyiv’s leadership shake-up and the drone state
To sustain that tempo, President Volodymyr Zelensky has begun reshaping the state around drone warfare and intelligence. He has named a spy chief to head his presidential office after a corruption row, a move described by Jaroslav Lukivand and Vitaliy Shevchenko as part of a broader effort aimed at ending the war on terms acceptable to Kyiv. Another account notes that Zelensky has brought that intelligence veteran into the heart of the presidential administration as Ukraine fights for survival against Russia, signaling that covert operations and targeting data are now central to political decision making.
On the military side, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has proposed a trusted ally and technocrat as a new defense chief explicitly to Boost Ukraine’s Drone Power. That choice dovetails with a separate account that, upon the recommendation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr, a former First Deputy Prime current Minister for Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has become defense minister with a mandate to reform army technology. I read those moves as a deliberate attempt to fuse the country’s tech sector, intelligence services, and armed forces into a single “drone state” apparatus that can keep pace with Russia’s larger industrial base.
Russia’s own drone surge and the race to adapt
Kyiv’s urgency is sharpened by the fact that its adversary is racing to scale up as well. As Russia plans to double its drone army to over 165,000 by 2026, Ukraine is expanding its own unmanned forces and forming specialized units to hunt them. A separate account of the same plan notes that As Russia accelerates production, Ukraine is responding with its own expansion of unmanned units and counter-drone teams, turning the conflict into a contest of electronic warfare, jamming, and air defense as much as explosives and armor. When I weigh those figures, it is clear that neither side sees drones as a niche capability; they are planning for mass, attritional use.
That scale has direct consequences for the pilots who fly at the “under our feet” distances. One detailed account of the front-line unit describes how Ukraine’s drone forces commander estimates that his operators are now responsible for a fluctuating but substantial share of Russian casualties along roughly 30% of the front. Another passage, inviting readers to Follow Matthew Loh, notes that every time Matthew publishes a story about these pilots, readers are reminded that each mission involves flying a munition across distances comparable to a short walk. I read that juxtaposition of mass production and intimate violence as a warning: the more drones both sides field, the more the war will hinge on small teams of operators making split-second decisions over life and death.
Foreign intelligence and the widening risk envelope
External partners are now deeply embedded in this drone-centered battlefield. The United States has started sharing intelligence with Ukraine on deep-strike targets inside Russia, a significant shift that effectively extends Western eyes into the planning of long-range drone and missile attacks. That policy change is likely to encourage other allies to follow suit, even as it raises tensions with Moscow and feeds Kremlin narratives that it is fighting not just Ukraine but a broader coalition. When I factor in the daily drone strikes on Moscow and the hits on refineries, the risk of miscalculation or retaliation beyond Ukraine’s borders becomes harder to ignore.
At the same time, Ukraine’s own information ecosystem around drones has become more sophisticated and more public-facing. One detailed feature on a front-line unit invites readers to Every time a new dispatch appears, with prompts to Enter an email address and Sign up for alerts about the unit’s exploits. That kind of storytelling, combined with detailed reporting on how Ukraine has built an army of long-range drones, helps sustain domestic morale and international support, but it also normalizes a form of warfare in which targets are, as the commander put it, right under the pilots’ feet.
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