Meet the Ukrainian “dream team” of civilians confronting the nightmare of Russian drones
GroundTruth guest columnist Deb Amos shares the stories of civilians in Ukraine who are volunteering to shoot down Russian drones.
Editor’s note: Russian drones are reshaping the battlefield in Ukraine. Some of the modified drones are guided by fiber optic cables, and the thin, glistening wires that spool behind the deadly drones are leaving a spider’s web criss-crossing fields and trenches and the villages that dot the frontlines to evade detection and avoid anti-drone jamming. It is a nightmare image of modern warfare, but as veteran correspondent Deb Amos shares with us in a GroundTruth guest column, there is a “dream team” of Ukrainian citizens who are taking up arms and shooting drones out of the sky.
Deb’s piece is the first in what will be a new series of columns by journalists and industry leaders we highly value and who will help us share more thought leadership and on-the-ground reporting around the world with our community.
Deb is a friend and longtime colleague who you might remember was also our first Substack Live guest. A former international correspondent for NPR, she is an award-winning veteran reporter on conflict who has always focused on human rights, and in the past several weeks, she has been doing her signature reporting on the ground in Ukraine. There, she is bearing witness to the human toll of the war that continues to devastate communities and test the endurance of a nation. In this piece, Deb turns her attention to a group of Ukrainians who are doing their part in fighting Russian aggression: civilians-turned-volunteers who are helping defend Ukraine’s skies by shooting down Russian drones.
Death is random in Ukraine, despite alarm systems that warn of Russia’s nighttime attacks. A phone app features a map that turns deep red when the threat level is high. Hotel sound systems blast instructions to find shelter. Sirens wail on the streets.
The alerts announce the drones are coming—but not where the drones will hit. It’s a new definition of Russian roulette.
There is time to hurry to a bomb shelter but after more than three years of war, not everyone decides to spend an uncomfortable night underground, rather many take the risk of dying in bed to get a few more hours of sleep, or to finish a dream before morning, when the workday begins.
Ukraine is in a new arms race with Russia. The pace and scale has changed over the past few months. Russia is escalating overnight attacks, repeatedly setting new records for the number of weapons launched.
On July 4th, Putin ordered the largest attack of the war. The Kyiv Independent reported 550 aerial weapons, including 330 Iranian-type Shaheed drones and multiple missiles that injured at least 23 people. June was also a record month with 5000 Russian drone attacks, the highest since the war began.
Civilian deaths are rising, too. 37% higher than a year ago with 968 civilians killed and 4,807 injured, according to the United Nations Human Rights office.
Another rising indicator is the sophistication of the weapons. On this high-tech battlefield, there’s a race for innovation. Russia dramatically increases production of long-range drones controlled by computers far from the battlefield. Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation announces the development of a new kind of ammunition, with a specialized warhead, to destroy them.
Now, Ukraine has a plan to pay civilian volunteers up to $2,400 a month to track and shoot down Russian drones. The program “aims to strengthen air defense,” according to Taras Melychuk, a government representative to parliament, who wrote about the program on Telegram. The new program is a response to waves of drones pounding Ukrainian cities.
However, the innovation is simply this: for the first time in the war, civilian drone killers will be paid for their service.
Since the early days of the conflict, teams of Ukrainian volunteers have been spending sleepless nights, juggling day jobs as university professors, salesmen, even opera singers, to try to repel the Russian weapon that kills the most Ukrainian civilians
“I am a judge and almost everyone from my squad is a judge,” explains Andrian, who gives only his first name for security reasons. He is part of a team of judges who change out of black legal robes and don green military uniforms for the twelve-hour shift on the banks of the Dnipro River, the flight path of the low flying Russian drones that target the capital.
Judges can’t be mobilized – because the court must work even during the war, he says. So, this squad volunteered in the early days of the war.
“We have a Supreme Court judge, and our commander is a Constitutional Court judge, so he can cancel my decisions,” he says with a sly smile, ‘but here, everyone is equal.”
They built the wooden platform for a machine gun and a cannon, they constructed the sleeping quarters, too.” We spend our own money; the government does not spend a penny for that. They only gave us the guns and the bullets because we can’t buy them at the mall.”
The weapons are antiquated, says Andrian, as he shrugs when reading off the dates of production stamped on the barrels of the machine gun. “1945, 1930, 1930,” he says, “they are older than my grandma, but they still work. The bullets are about two dollars each. It’s the cheapest way to strike down drones.”
The high-tech addition to these old weapons is up-to-date computer tablets fixed to the guns, “a signal comes to the tablet, we can see a white silhouette of the drone.’” The engine glows in red. The gunners shoot off a curtain of bullets ahead of the drone’s path.
On a heavy night, the machine gun gets so hot you can boil an egg on the barrel, and it takes buckets of water to cool it down, he says, “It’s like the engine for a car.”
The unit’s name is printed on his uniform – “We are called Dream,” then he adds,” you know, like the Dream Team.”
The name comes from a Ukrainian cargo ship, Andrian explains, but adds that his dream team is guarding the skies and provides a crucial support service for the Ukrainian military that uses more sophisticated weapons to down the missiles and the more complex high flying Russian drones.
There are thousands of these volunteer units stationed across the country. More are likely to sign up when the salary incentive kicks in.
As Andrian prepares for the night ahead, he says he, too, has a dream shared by his team, “We have children. We have a family. We want a better future for them, we can’t believe that we are living in the 21st century in the middle of Europe and we are in this horrible war. We want this war to stop.”
Special thanks to the International Women’s Media Foundation for a reporting grant, and to Deb’s reporting partner, Joanne Levine.
If you have an idea for a guest column, please reach out to us with a short pitch at info@groundtruth.org.
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