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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Exclusive: Inside a secretive Ukrainian drone unit targeting Russian
territory
By Sebastian Shukla, Daria Tarasova-Markina, Victoria Butenko, Frederik
Pleitgen and Claudia Otto | Video by Julie Zink, Phil Clarke Hill,
Oscar Featherstone, CNN
Updated:
7:18 AM EDT, Wed October 16, 2024
Source: CNN
The spluttering roar of a propeller punctuates the perfect silence. Car
headlights flick on, splitting the darkness. Their beams reveal not
just a section of tarmac ahead, but one of Ukraine’s most top-secret
weapons, controlled by its most clandestine agency.
Stuck to the nose of the gray machine is a yellow emblem of an owl,
wings spread and grasping a sword – the unmistakable logo of
Ukraine’s defense intelligence, the GUR.
Two pilots sporting the same owl patches on their fatigues make their
final checks inside the car before a thumbs up: “Let’s go!”
A high-speed, 50-second chase ensues, before the 13-foot long, 23-foot
wingspan AN-196 Liutyi drone disappears in an instant into the
inky-black Ukrainian night.
The drone’s destination is a target deep inside Russian territory.
CNN was granted unprecedented exclusive access to one of Ukraine’s
long-range drone units, part of the GUR. Its members call themselves
the Long-Range UAV Unit.
Only two people were authorized to speak on the record, and then only
using their callsigns: Serge, the long-range drone operations commander
of GUR, and Vector, unit commander. Serge said he had personally
overseen more than 500 long-range drone attacks into Russia since its
full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
CNN spent two days traveling across the country with the drone unit as
it prepared to launch more than 100 drones overnight into September 29
on a mission into Russia. CNN is not disclosing the location of the
sites visited for operational security reasons.
Their target: an ammunition facility, specifically train carriages
sitting inside the depot loaded with recently delivered Iranian
missiles, according to the Ukrainians.
Sources told CNN in September that completed the delivery of
short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. Iran has vehemently . “Iran
has NOT delivered ballistic missiles to Russia. Period!” Iran’s
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently stated on his X account.
The facility sits on the outskirts of the tiny village of Kotluban, in
the Volgograd region of southwestern Russia.
Long-range drone attacks have become an increasingly prominent part of
the Russia-Ukraine war. As the land war has , the air war has gathered
speed, with the major development being in drone warfare.
In September, the unit’s drones hit a Russian ammunition depot
between Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Tver region. The attack on
Toropets, the Ukrainians claimed, resulted in the destruction of a
depot storing Iskander tactical missiles, as well as aerial glide bombs
and artillery munition. The strike caused massive explosions, visible
for miles.
And in July the Ukrainians say they hit an oil refinery on Russia’s
Black Sea coast, causing a major fire there.
But Russian air defenses thwart many Ukrainian drone attacks. The
GUR’s success rate, the unit tells CNN, could be transformed from
50% to 95% if the United States gave permission to use Western
weapons in attacks on Russian soil.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned, however, that Moscow would
consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a ,
singling out a mass launching of drones as one potential example.
Vector said many of Russia’s airfields, the origin-point of many of
the air raids it conducts against Ukraine, are out of range. His
drones, while highly effective, are not always that efficient –
swarms of them are required to ensure their targets are hit. “Of
course, we can send the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), and we
destroyed many places. But it’s not enough,” Vector says.
“We’re not asking only about the permission to send the missiles
anywhere in Russia, we speak about the weapons which can help us to
move this war from our territory,” Vector adds.
Inside the mission
Serge and Vector have been leading their unit’s attempts to hurt
Putin at home.
Regardless of targets, their missions follow a rigid set of operating
procedures that include meetings at various locations across Ukraine.
In an underground office with dark brown, seemingly never-ending Soviet
corridors, Serge sits across from Vector in a white-walled room. No
pictures hang on the wall, even the whiteboard remains blank. The
meeting is to the point.
“There will be about 12 drones,” Serge says to Vector, who has a
map in front of him detailing the target and range of the Russian air
defense and electronic warfare systems. They then agree the target
approach time of around 3 am and the launch intervals for the drones.
Vector scribbles two notes before standing abruptly and saying,
“Everything is clear. Ready to complete the task.”
Outside on the street, Vector climbs into his vehicle. He beckons the
CNN team to follow him, phones turned off.
As dusk draws in, the convoy pulls into a compound, articulated lorries
lined up. A tiny room with a desk and two sets of bunk beds serves as
the only light source for miles around.
Men dressed in black, balaclavas over their faces, wait to hear their
orders. Vector delivers a short brief, adding that this mission will
also involve other units. He orders his men to start preparing the
routes and hands over a small USB key containing the information for
the mission ahead.
“Any questions?” he asks. “None? Okay. Let’s get working.”
As his men scatter across the compound, Vector explains that the
planning phase of these missions is critical. “Planning is maybe 60%
part of the success, everything depends on the planning,” he tells
CNN.
He points to the quality of Russia’s air defenses, especially over
the past 12 months. “We’re successful guys and we find the
windows,” he says, but it’s a challenge.
Each drone will be programmed with more than 1,000 different waypoints,
to evade Russia’s comprehensive air defense systems. There is tacit
acceptance from Vector that some of this resembles a video game.
“It looks like we play with them,” Vector says jokingly, “but
it’s not a game. It’s a war.”
Serge adds that not all men in his unit are career soldiers like him.
He has served more than 20 years in the Ukrainian army and began flying
drone missions in 2014 as Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s
eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions split away from Kyiv.
Decoy machines
In a warehouse, a Liutyi drone, produced predominantly in Ukraine,
wingless for the time being, stands surrounded by green
camouflage-painted crates containing multiple Rubaka kamikaze drones.
Vector explains that these smaller drones are crucial to the success of
any mission. The aim is simple: to overwhelm the air defenses and draw
Russian fire away from the Liutyi, which often carries a payload as
great as 250 kilograms (550 pounds).
“They’re very simple, and we can use them with and without
payloads,” he says of the smaller drones.
Cracking open one of the crates, he pulls out one of the decoy
machines. Strips of metal foil have been added to the wings to fool
Russian radar.
“We try to mix them, and we try to send them from different
distances, different launch places… they try to destroy them. They
send helicopters and missiles, they turn on the radio electronic
warfare,” Vector explains.
Their targets are only military targets, Vector states. “Russia came
inside our country. They destroyed a lot of electricity, a lot of
houses, cities, villages.” But, he adds, “not all of them are
stupid, and when they understand that war can come to them like they
come to us, they will change something in their country. They will
change the politics.”
One of the many articulated lorries has backed up for loading. In near
darkness, drone bodies, followed by wings, are loaded three per truck
by men whose faces are totally covered by balaclavas, and strapped
down, ready to be taken to their launch sites.
Across other parts of Ukraine roughly 80 other GUR operatives are
preparing 90 other drones, not all the Liutyi, for flight.
Some 30% of all the drones being launched will be on decoy missions,
Serge says. The drones have been programmed to fly anywhere between 450
and 550 miles, with the Liutyis being the spearhead, destined for the
small town-turned-ammunition hub of Kotluban.
The men load the warheads carefully into the bodies of the drones. Each
compartment is then sealed with the squeal of a drill.
Serge and Vector, now in full combat uniform, observe the final
preparations. This launch is one of the largest Serge has ever
conducted, he says.
“Maybe (the Russian people) don’t understand what’s going on in
Ukraine, but when these UAVs arrive, they understand clearly what we
have been living (with) for the past 10 years,” Vector chimes in.
Tracking the drones’ flight
In total darkness, the drones are pushed into position. The car with
the pilots moves in behind. The propeller spurts into life and the
pilots ensuring a smooth takeoff begin their high-speed chase down the
tarmac. Once airborne the fully autonomous drone starts ticking off
the myriad waypoints.
Vector hurtles after the drone before slamming on the brakes and
proclaiming “perfect.” He turns the car around and blasts a
patriotic song from his radio.
Earlier, he told CNN: “I don’t want my son or other children to
have a war in the future, so I want to finish it in my life.”
Back at the planning base, the hours tick by and Vector, Serge and
others keep tabs on the drones via trackers.
The success of the mission is monitored in three ways, they say:
through human intelligence on the ground, the messages seen on Russian
Telegram groups and, later, analysis using satellite technology. Only
once all three have been assessed can a mission be deemed a success or
not.
As the 3 am arrival window nears, Serge starts reading out messages he
is seeing from Telegram channels across Russia. The widespread nature
of this attack starts to become clearer. Various cities in southern
Russia – Voronezh, Yesk, Rostov and Volgograd – all start reporting
drones arriving in their airspace.
One video from Voronezh shows one of the decoy drones whizzing
overhead. An audio clip of a woman in clear distress at what is
happening above her head leaves Vector laughing.
Through these Telegram channels, he says, “we understand that we are
having some success.”
Initial satellite imagery of the ammunition depot in Kotluban shows
scorched fields, a result of burning grass, but seemingly little
evidence of major explosions within – apparent signs of a near miss.
However, the GUR shared with CNN a video from the region of the depot.
CNN was able to independently view and verify aspects of the video
without a blur to check its authenticity.
A defense intelligence source told CNN that their knowledge of the
camera’s location, combined with its distance from Kotluban, allowed
them to ascertain that the explosions inside the depot were large.
The video, sped up, shows 11 explosions all occurring in a 56-minute
timeframe between 2:22 and 3:18 am – exactly the period during which
the drones arriving from Ukraine were expected to land.
CNN was able to independently verify, through sources, that a direct
hit on the facility had taken place. CNN is not publishing the image to
protect the source’s anonymity, but it was taken within 72 hours of
the attack.
The image shows a number of objects scattered around the building and a
building badly damaged.
A later Maxar Technologies satellite image, also obtained by CNN, shows
less debris in the vicinity – an indication that the Russian military
had cleaned up the site – but the same building, heavily damaged.
The mission to destroy Iranian-delivered missiles was a total success,
the Ukrainians insist.
As the drones were heading towards Kotluban, Serge told CNN: “We are
constantly forcing the enemy to think about what they did in February
2022. They must realize that we are getting stronger every day and we
are bringing our victory and their defeat closer.”
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