Has drone dominance in Ukraine changed warfare forever?

0:02Alex Rossi:Sky News, the full story first.

0:12Alex Rossi:That is the sound there of life on the front line of the war in Ukraine in 2026. But how have remote controlled flying drones laden with explosives become the dominant form of killing in the conflict?

0:30Alex Rossi:Drones, they're difficult to spot and you can often hear them before you see them. But on the battlefields of Ukraine's war against Russia's invading forces, they've become a fixture of daily life.

0:41Gareth Barlow:We're just heading to a new frontline position and we can warn that there is a first-person viewed drone, an attack drone, in the sky above us. So the soldier we're with has told us to wait here and just try and take some cover.

0:56Alex Rossi:I'm Gareth Palome, and on today's Daily, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of this conflict, we're travelling to the front line, where Sky's international correspondent, Alex Rossi, and Ukraine producer, Azad Zafarov, have been following Ukrainian soldiers. Alex, Azad, good to have you both with us. You currently are in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, but you've been to the Donbass region in the east of Ukraine. Alex, just talk to us about what life is like right now in the conflict in 2026.

1:26Gareth Barlow:It's grim, it's brutal, and the war is transforming, and it's almost transforming on a weekly basis. If you rewind back to the beginning of the conflict in February 2022, it was an artillery war, it was fairly conventional, troops would move forwards, mass armour, and artillery dominated. That was the real threat. Now, of course, that artillery is still there, but the big change is drones. They are everywhere. The sky is saturated in eastern Ukraine with surveillance drones, what's called FPV drones. This is first-person view attack drones. And they have explosive charges on them. They can be different sizes.

2:09Gareth Barlow:And they also have cameras. And essentially, they go around the battlefield seeking out targets. And what happens is the Russians are sending over drones and they're hitting anything that moves on those roads. At the beginning of this war, you could hunker down, you could hide in bunkers, you could seek shelter. But these drones and their algorithms, they see absolutely everything. And let's say, for instance, you manage to find some cover and get into a bunker, the drone can follow you in. It's kind of almost like a sort of deadly video game. It's absolutely terrifying.

2:44Alex Rossi:With regards to that threat, that aerial threat, how are the teams, the crews, the soldiers on the front line, and even civilians, let's be honest, trying to mitigate against that? You see some images, I think, of nets being used.

2:58Gareth Barlow:Now, we were down there with those guys for a day. We went out to see this team of drone hunters. Their job is to basically shoot down these FPV drones to stop them hitting supplies. They're doing it every day. They hunt in the shadows and they're shooting them down with shotguns and Kalashnikovs. But of course, if you miss and the drone locks in on you, it's absolutely deadly. And I think the other thing to bear in mind is it's not just on the front line, just the roads going down into eastern Ukraine. They have become also targets. So it's quite eerie when you drive down there. They've now put nets over the roads to stop the drones getting through.

3:42Gareth Barlow:So, I mean, that in itself is also a massive change in this conflict.

3:47Alex Rossi:With that aerial risk constantly at hand, drones that do up to 100 kilometres an hour at times, how did that impact how you got about moving around, getting to the front line? How does that impact how soldiers do so? It strikes me that being out in the open is the last place you want to be right now.

4:05Azad Safarov:Yeah, everything on the front line changing so far, not by monthly, not even by year, but by weekly. You know, in some cities, you can't already drive like in Konstantinophe. You can't drive on the car because you became, as soldier says, fat target. You can only walk there and you have to walk like kilometers before you get to the position, for example. And the same is for soldiers and the same for the journalists if they want to go and walk there.

4:29Gareth Barlow:I mean, the other thing as well to understand is that this has an impact on just rotating troops in the frontline position. From the command headquarters, we had to travel for the best part of an hour to get to those frontline positions. Now, a little bit of that was on the back of a 4x4, which has drone jammers on it. But a lot of it was on foot, a bit was on quad bikes. But you're exposed, you're out in the open. Now, they've got drone detectors. They've also got surveillance drones warning teams what's coming and keeping an eye on things. But you really are exposed every time you move, which is why they don't move in really large numbers.

5:10Gareth Barlow:Now, the parallel to that is how Russia is fighting the war. They're not moving forwards in big armour or with tanks anymore. They're sending squads of men, often when there's changes in the weather, mist or some kind of fog or cover, and they launch these probing attacks to try and gain a foothold, an outpost, which they can then build on to kind of strengthen an attack. But you see these men coming forwards and then they get hit by the Ukrainian drones. So it's massively changed the whole concept, really, of how wars are being fought. The other thing that really struck me is amongst this report, you of course expect to see the drones.

5:51Alex Rossi:You of course expect to see soldiers. But you found civilians who were still enduring hell four years on.

6:00Azad Safarov:Yeah, actually, we were very surprised when we saw with Alex in that small village, people like grandma and grandpa living in that building. And Alex asked them the question which everybody will ask, why are you still here? And they all mostly answered the same way. They said, we have a small pension, we have no possibilities to move out, and we don't want to go because it's our house. We will stay here till the end. And this is a huge problem. There's a lot of casualties among the civilians in all our frontline cities because Russians hunting for the civilians as well.

6:32Gareth Barlow:I mean, the other thing that was quite staggering, Gareth, is that around Alexander's house, virtually every building had been destroyed or shelled by artillery or drones. and yet they were still there trying to live a normal life. But I mean, it's kind of almost impossible to understand why they are still there and why they stay. But they have nowhere else to go, so they'll stay put. But I've met lots of people from the beginning of the war in similar situations, but there are far fewer people still trying to survive in these battlegrounds.

7:07Alex Rossi:I was on air when Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago, and an interview that always stuck with me was with a reporter who was in the east of Ukraine, and he was stood there as a car pulls up, three guys get out the back, they open the trunk, they've got one rusty Kalashnikov and a box of grenades, and they just got them out, stood there and looked down the road. They didn't know what was coming. And Alex, that scene now has been so markedly replaced.

7:33Gareth Barlow:Yeah, I mean, certainly most Western intelligence agencies thought that Ukraine would be brought to its knees in a matter of days, as of course did Vladimir Putin with, in inverted commas, his 10-day special military operation. But actually, what we have seen is that Ukraine's defences were far more robust and far more organised than anybody had thought. four years on, they are still standing. They're not only still standing, but they're fighting. I mean, the battlefield is something of a stalemate, but they're still there. And they are actually, at the moment, launching counter-offensives. How successful they will be, we don't know.

8:14Gareth Barlow:But they're managing to fight back. I think the big question here for lots of people is, bearing in mind how well Ukraine has done, what would this war have looked like had they been given far more support early on. Remember the incremental changes in Western governments. No, we're not going to give you this. We'll give you, I think at the beginning of the war, things like javelins, defensive weaponry, but nothing that you can launch an offensive operation against the Russians because there was this fear, really, that Putin would launch a tactical nuclear strike. Would we even still be talking about it as a conflict or would it have been resolved had they had more weapons?

8:51Gareth Barlow:But I think the sort of thinking here is that the longer it goes on And if Ukraine can still hold on and not capitulate, the cost for the war becomes far greater for Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

9:04Alex Rossi:Azad, I think it's fair to say that Ukraine is having to try and do an awful lot with not a lot. You went down into kind of the control centre of the drone hunters, the people who were tasked with protecting those on the front line, protecting the artillery, the troops, the equipment. What was that kind of bunker like when you went down into that?

9:23Azad Safarov:It's kind of, you know, the kingdom under the ground, because they have their own system. They have all the laptops, monitors, internet, everything there. They can live there. I think they can even survive the nuclear bomb there. I think this is the most important thing about Ukraine. They adapt quickly. Even when they don't have enough, they're trying to find different ways of adapting and of surviving and fighting back.

9:48Gareth Barlow:I mean, what's also incredible about it is that You see this bank of monitors and they'll bring up pictures from the surveillance drones, which are constantly moving around the battlefield in different locations. And they'll pick up one image and then they'll show you a Russian soldier standing by a tree. He's been spotted. He doesn't know he's been spotted. And they'll just casually turn around to you and say, we're going to FPV him later on. They then conjure up, as if by magic, another image on another monitor. and when we were there, they showed us this water tube. This is like a hole in the earth, in the forest.

10:23Gareth Barlow:They'd seen a group of Russians crawling in there to try and get cover as they move forwards. And then they just said, you know, we'll call in some FPV drones. We saw one come in, smashed into the target. They weren't satisfied with that. They brought in another one, which went even deeper into the bunker that they were in. And then massive explosion. And of course, no one comes out. You can see everything. It's really, really surreal.

10:48Alex Rossi:You witnessed the threat of drones yourselves firsthand. What happened?

10:52Gareth Barlow:Well, we were moving up to a forward position to meet this team of drone hunters. But we were tracking across a bit of open ground. I think the detectors that they had, the drone detectors they had, first started leaping. So there was a warning. There's an FPV drone coming. That was what the commander Bogdan told us. So move quickly. So we move across the open ground. We're totally exposed. There's nowhere really to seek cover, and we're sort of running around wondering what to do. He points at this tree, and you sort of look at it, and it's just a sort of skeletal twig sticking out of the ground.

11:32Gareth Barlow:We just sort of hunker behind it to try and stop any signs of movement, because obviously the more movement you have, it's easier to pick up on a camera. So we're behind this tree and it's quite chaotic at this moment. I mean, I myself thought that the drone had passed. It hadn't passed. I wasn't clear what was going on. The detector starts beeping again. They're constantly looking up the sky, readying their weapons. And then we hear this kind of menacing buzz. It's like a sort of deadly mosquito sort of coming in on you. And it's like, oh, is this it? Is this the moment? And the guy's steely nerves is just standing there.

12:10Gareth Barlow:And then he starts unloading his Kalashnikov up in the sky. And another soldier joins in as well. I didn't really have much time to think after that until, fortunately, this kind of just utter relief as you see this thing fall out of the sky. But then that relief is replaced by utter stomach-churning dread afterwards. Because you know, ah, they've probably spotted us. Because they've got the same surveillance drones that we've seen hundreds of times where they spot people. And they could call in artillery now. They will know our coordinates. They could send in more drones. So it's back on your feet.

12:47Gareth Barlow:You're running. You're trying to move to cover. But it's absolutely terrifying. These men are doing this every day. They're going out into this grim, frozen hellscape. And they're having these fights with drones in the sky. I mean, it's astonishing.

13:03Alex Rossi:Just talk to us, finally, about the prospect of peace. because Russia, Ukraine, the US, meeting again in Geneva, more peace talks, it feels as though we're stuck in a rut with this. Considering everything you've just described, what are the prospects for peace in the short term?

13:20Gareth Barlow:Well, I mean, I think the answer to that question lies in Vladimir Putin's mind in Moscow. And that's fairly impenetrable. We don't really know what he's thinking. I mean, Ukraine is quite happy to take a ceasefire now and was many, many months ago. I think the hopes of these talks, like the last lot, I don't think anybody's particularly optimistic. The big sticking point, of course, is territory. Ukraine says, why should we give up territory that Russia hasn't actually even won on the battlefield? Not only that, but you're also talking about a principle that was established after the Second World War that force shouldn't redraw borders.

14:00Gareth Barlow:I mean, it would set an awful precedent, the argument goes. So I don't think there's a great deal of optimism at the moment. But I think one thing is clear that eventually one side or the other will break and there'll have to be some kind of negotiation that will yield the result.

14:20Azad Safarov:As a Ukrainian, I don't see the prospect of their future peace. Not this year, for sure. We believe that there should be more pressure on Russia, more sanction. And we hope that Europe will change as quickly as possible. rearming and supplying more weapons to Ukraine. But we don't believe on Putin's promises. And we definitely know that if we give this territory away, he will just want more and more and more. They will never stop. And Putin will never stop.

14:47Alex Rossi:Azad, Alex, really good to have you with us. Good to have you with us as well, listeners of the podcast. That's all for today. If you head to the Sky News website, you can watch Alex's full report. And I do implore you to do so. The Daily is back again tomorrow.