Ukraine is relying on drones to hold back Russian advances. Troops on the frontline are fearing the worst

By Nick Paton Walsh and Kosta Gak, CNN

Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine (CNN) — The Russian assault, caught in grainy feeds from multiple drones, is relentless and daily. Aging armored vehicles race across a pockmarked field. Then, in broad daylight, one tank is stopped by Ukrainian attack drones. Yet two vehicles make it to the treeline and drop off Russian troops to shelter in the scant winter foliage. Minutes later, more drones strike the lone dismounts.

Another tank, partially damaged in its first run, continues through the treeline ahead. It breaks into the next open field, with some troops apparently clinging still to its battered exterior. The sight and its bloodshed are perversely intimate in the live detail, even though the horror we are watching is about 10 miles away.

Once the tank is halfway across the next field, the swarm of single-use drones strikes it again and it slows to a smoking halt. However much of each assault they kill, the Ukrainians complain, the few Russians who advance are immediately reinforced by another 10.

Ukraine cannot match Moscow’s numbers, or a tolerance for casualties that Western officials claim is resulting in up to 1,200 dead or injured daily across the frontlines. Kyiv’s manpower crisis has been palpable in Pokrovsk for weeks, soldiers around the eastern front told CNN, and Moscow’s savage tactics are seeing persistent success.

“The situation is very critical,” said East, the callsign of a commander of a drone unit working around Pokrovsk. “We lack infantry to fight and hold out for some time while the drones do their work. That’s why we often see situations where the enemy uncontrollably penetrates vulnerable areas.”

Troops in Pokrovsk told CNN of manpower shortages so acute they feared Russia could make a significant breakthrough and complained of having to use drones to strike advancing Russian units because they lacked infantry to confront them.

One commander said Selydove, a key town outside of Pokrovsk taken by Russia in October, was defended with only six Ukrainian positions, which he assessed meant about 60 troops were involved in the operation. They were quickly encircled, outnumbered and retreated with significant casualties.

It is rare to hear Ukrainian troops disparage commanders and starkly assess the frontline to reporters, but multiple soldiers around Pokrovsk presented a stark assessment of the current Russian offensive and their own prospects in the area over the coming months.

The upcoming presidency of Donald Trump causes some anxiety: troops were keen to not offend the incoming US commander in chief and also concerned about the fate of their fight. “I will hold back, as I talk straight,” said one soldier. Another feared a January peace initiative after Trump’s inauguration might be too late.

“I cannot say exactly how much time we have, if there is any time at all,” said Kashei, a callsign, a reconnaissance sniper. “Now they are pushing their troops to the frontline as much as possible. And then at one point they will all go for an assault. They can go very far. In one day, let’s say.

“The enemy is advancing because there are no people defending on the ground,” he continued. “Nobody wants to sit there. There is a very high chance that they will not come back.”

The drone crew skip through their video library of the past weeks’ costly and chaotic withdrawals. There is the moment when three Ukrainian troops walk into a factory in Selydove a month earlier, advised it is under Ukrainian control, only for one of them to be shot down by Russians occupying the building.

Another scene involves a Ukrainian drone unit defending another village, mostly without infantry support, encircled by Russian troops. The footage shows a Russian soldier hiding nearby and the unit firing a drone – usually sent kilometers toward the front – just 30 meters (98 feet) away to hit the approaching Russians.

Recruitment brings its own issues. The defense of Selydove, one commander said, was bolstered by 300 fresh recruits, sent to the frontline directly and expected to undergo basic training in the trenches. Errors by command are increasing, several soldiers said, sharing an episode in which a unit of Ukrainian soldiers was attacked by drones on the frontline, after two Ukrainian commanders mistakenly failed to identify them.

Mistakes are commonplace in the chaos and horror of a battlefield, yet this openness and candor is rare from troops who a year earlier would have spoken with fierce pride about Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive in Russia’s Kursk region.

“I have no people. I’m f**king alone. I’m f**king tired,” said Kotia, a callsign, another reconnaissance sniper. “I love my job, but we need other young people to love this job too. Our country is awake, but people in it are not. Guys are dying here. This is trash.”

The prospect of peace talks beginning when Trump takes power in January provided little consolation. “Freezing this war is a double-edged sword,” Kotia said. “Do we give up the land my friends died for, or to continue taking it back and lose even more friends. If these two old men (Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin) start measuring d*cks, Ukraine will be the middle of it all. That won’t be pleasant.”

East, the drone commander, said he was assigned to the area in August. “During this time, we have never gone to the training grounds or replenished our personnel,” he said. The Russians “are constantly staffed, constantly trained, there are certain rotations, replenishment of personnel. We constantly hear about it from intercepts, that they have replacements and rotations.”

The intensity of the Russian assault against Pokrovsk is felt in multiple directions. One Russian push heads to its south, around the smaller town of Kurakhove, where the remaining Ukrainian troops risk being cut off by a Russian “pincer” movement to the south and north.

Other Russian assault units are pushing fast towards Pokrovsk itself, with infantry units, sometimes only a few Russians strong, probing into villages and looking for holes in Ukraine’s increasingly porous defenses. One commander told CNN that troops around Pokrovsk had been ordered to shoot unidentified persons on sight, in fear of Russian reconnaissance groups advancing.

The brutality of the Russian assault also batters morale. A drone video circulating shows a small house on the edges of Petrivka, a village close to Pokrovsk, on November 13. The footage shows a local in an orange shirt, guiding advancing Russian troops to a basement where Ukrainian soldiers were hiding.

One by one, the Ukrainians are led out into the daylight and forced at gunpoint to lie face down. The video then shows one soldier apparently fire at the prone Ukrainians, the leg of one twitching after the gunfire.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general said on Tuesday it had launched an investigation into the incident as “a war crime combined with premeditated murder,” adding: “In violation of international humanitarian law, the occupiers shot the Ukrainian prisoners with automatic weapons. The killing of prisoners of war is a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions and is classified as a grave international crime.”

This story has been updated.

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