How Ukrainian Soldiers Fight and Survive in the Kill Zone

The front has become an outmoded concept. There is now a miles wide gray zone, loosely held by small groups of infantry supplied by drones. It is also a kill zone, where to move is to die, spotted and then dispatched by ever watchful drones. 

Living conditions are primitive. Lengths of deployment are mind-numbingly long due to the threat of detection and the difficulty of insertion and extraction. But still the Ukrainian troops hold. JL

Constant Meheut and colleagues report in the New York Times:

Six months in the kill zone: holed up in a half-destroyed house. They could hear drones buzzing overhead nonstop. To avoid detection, they relieved themselves in bags rather than step outside; slept pressed together in winter rather than light a fire; and dragged the bodies of Russian soldiers they killed into their house, so drones  would not detect signs of With vehicles unable to reach the front, food and water were dropped by drones. The drops sometimes failed, leaving them hungry and thirsty. Units could only fly in medicine. For soldiers badly wounded and in need of evacuation, the only option was a robotic ground vehicle.. Moving is the most dangerous thing a soldier can do in the kill zone. The front has blurred into a miles wide wasteland and has become so fuzzy that opposing troops sometimes shelter in the same building.

All along the 750-mile front line in Ukraine, armies of drones watch, hunt and strike anything that dares to move.

Whatever the drones can reach is a target: Soldiers fighting from ruined houses. Medics racing to the wounded in armored vehicles. Commanders plotting attacks from distant bunkers. Trucks hauling ammunition down far-off roads.

Henadii and Mykhailo spent more than six months in this so-called kill zone, holed up in a half-destroyed house. They could hear drones buzzing overhead nonstop, like traffic on a busy highway. To avoid detection, they relieved themselves in bags rather than step outside; slept pressed together in winter rather than light a fire; and dragged the bodies of Russian soldiers they had killed into their house, so drones overhead would not detect signs of fighting.

The drones force soldiers to scatter and hide — sometimes, unknowingly, only yards from the enemy. One day, Henadii turned on his phone and it offered to connect to a Russian Wi-Fi router. “I immediately turned the phone off,” he said during an interview in early May, about a month after he had left the kill zone. Like all Ukrainian soldiers interviewed for this article, he asked to be identified by only his first name or call sign, for security reasons.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the war looked markedly different. The battlefield had clear boundaries, similar to what generations of soldiers had known in wars past. The Russian and Ukrainian Armies massed troops and fought from trenches separated by a no-man’s land. Combat was confined to a narrow area, with troops resting safely a few miles behind the front.

Then came the drones, with their constant surveillance, pinpoint strike precision and a reach that keeps expanding with technological improvements. As a result, the front has blurred into a miles-wide wasteland where neither side holds firm control. tree lines, and drones still find them.

Sources: Videos from Ukraine’s 47th, 65th and 128th brigades.

The kill zone has also transformed life at the front. Missions that once lasted a few days stretch into months because rotating troops under a drone-filled sky is too dangerous.

Henadii, 52, and Mykhailo, 51, described those months as hell. With vehicles unable to reach the front, food and water were dropped by drones. The drops sometimes failed, leaving them hungry and thirsty. Each lost 40 pounds. No medic could treat Mykhailo’s injured heel; his unit could only fly in medicine. For fellow soldiers badly wounded and in need of evacuation, the only option was often a robotic ground vehicle sent to carry them out.

As technology advances, experts say, the kill zone will grow only wider and deadlier. Drones flying farther will push the fighting into cities once considered safe. Artificial intelligence will sharpen targeting systems, shortening the time between detection and strike. The biggest cost, commanders say, will be borne by the soldiers on the ground, whose presence in the kill zone remains as crucial as ever to capture and hold land.

“The modern concept of war did not foresee this,” Mykhailo said. 

Entering the Kill Zone

Henadii and Mykhailo’s journey into the kill zone began on an infantry training ground last fall, when an instructor gathered troops and said he needed two men to replace soldiers injured at the front.

“Any volunteers,” the commander asked. Mykhailo, a warehouse loader who had volunteered to fight on the first day of the war and later suffered a shrapnel wound to his heel, knew what it meant to be left injured on the battlefield. He stepped forward, then turned to Henadii: “Are you coming?”

Henadii, a service member since before the full-scale war began, took it as a matter of pride. He stepped forward, too. The other soldiers sighed with relief that they would not be the ones heading into the kill zone that day. They boarded a vehicle toward the front.

They headed to Primorske, a town under assault in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, where their unit, Ukraine’s 128th Heavy Mechanized Brigade, has been deployed for more than two years.

In that time, both sides have raced to extend the range of their drones. Henadii and Mykhailo knew they had reached the edge of the kill zone when the vehicle carrying them stopped a mile short of their assigned position. Going farther would make the vehicle easy prey for drones. They would have to cover the rest on foot.

Moving is the most dangerous thing a soldier can do in the kill zone. When reconnaissance drones spot movement, they relay coordinates to attack drones that race to strike, said a drone battalion commander in Ukraine’s 128th Mountain Assault Brigade.

The mission of the commander, whose call sign is Stepanych, is to create a lethal cordon, impassable for Russian troops in an area near Henadii’s and Mykhailo’s position in Primorske. He has deployed attack drone crews roughly every two miles along the 10-mile stretch of front that is under his command. Together, they launch about 100 drones a day, keeping several in the air at any given time so they can be redirected to new targets within minutes.

The Russian Army, Stepanych said, “does the same thing.” Russian battlefield reports reviewed by The New York Times show that, on a single day in May, Russia had 199 reconnaissance drones ready to be launched near Primorske, with at least 62 Russian crews operating short-range attack drones in support.

“We call it the hunting mode,” Stepanych said on a May morning in his battalion’s command post, the nerve center of the kill zone. It looked like an air traffic control center. Banks of screens lined the walls, streaming live feeds from drones stalking targets over shattered villages, as well as intercepted Russian drone video that allowed the unit to watch the enemy watching them.

Eyes fixed on the screens, Stepanych coordinated strikes. Every so often, a colored box flashed across a video feed, signaling that enemy movement had been detected. Minutes later, a plume of smoke rose on the screen — a drone had hit.

For Henadii and Mykhailo, survival meant staying off Russian screens.

To reach their position, they followed a route mapped in advance that kept them off paths more visible from the sky. Overhead, a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone tracked their progress, streaming live video to officers in the rear who guided them by radio. Intercepted Russian drone feeds helped the officers warn them when enemy drones approached.

Whenever that happened, “we were told to camouflage ourselves, hide under trees or inside buildings,” Henadii said. “We waited until the enemy drones passed. Then we kept moving.”

It took the two men five hours to cover on foot the last mile to their outpost in southern Primorske. At the time, some civilians still lived in the town. They are now all gone. While Russian troops have not advanced in the area since the fall, their drones have, turning once-safe villages behind the front into part of the battlefield. Over that time, the Ukrainian authorities have evacuated at least 10 villages north of Primorske.

Olena Lubian, 61, and her mother, Valentyna Shevchenko, 92, were caught in the latest evacuation wave this spring. Their village, Komyshuvakha, about 11 miles from the front, had long escaped the fighting. Then Russian drones came and turned it into a shooting gallery. “They simply started wiping us out,” Ms. Lubian said, recalling how not a single roof in her neighborhood was left intact because of the strikes. On May 5, an armored vehicle from the Relief Coordination Center, a Ukrainian charity, finally evacuated Ms. Lubian and her mother. They took only a few bags of belongings with them.

“We built this life. We built this house,” Ms. Lubian said, her eyes swollen with tears as she showed pictures on her phone of her clay-and-straw home. “And we left it all behind.”

Fighting in the Kill Zone

After five hours, Henadii and Mykhailo reached their position: a 200-square-foot house with blown-out windows and a partly collapsed roof.

Inside were two wounded soldiers they had come to relieve. The men spent a few hours together so Henadii and Mykhailo could be briefed on their assignment: Hold the house and watch for Russian movements. Dozens of ruined houses ringed their outpost. Russian troops were believed to be hiding in at least one of them. Beyond that, little was certain. The enemy could be anywhere.

Soldiers no longer cluster in trenches — an easy target for drones. Instead, they spread out in small groups, hiding in underground shelters. A position is often held by only two soldiers, as shown in the Russian battlefield reports reviewed by The Times, which detail Russian troop deployments near Kamianske, a village south of Primorske.

The front has become so fuzzy that opposing troops sometimes shelter in the same building.

Nick, a Brazilian volunteer with Ukraine’s military intelligence forces, recalled fighting in a high-rise in Stepnohirsk, near Primorske, where “friendly troops were in the basement while the Russians were in the floors just above.” Because drones could not navigate the maze of rooms and stairwells, Nick’s unit had to engage in close combat to dislodge the Russian troops.

Soldiers call this the “gray zone." From their hideout, Henadii and Mykhailo repeatedly watched Russian troops advancing in small assault groups of only a few soldiers to minimize detection. Not long ago, they would have opened fire. But in the kill zone, using your rifle can be a deadly mistake, revealing your position to drones overhead.

So they operated as reconnaissance troops, watching for Russian soldiers and radioing their movements. Drones would do the killing.

“Neither side wants their infantry doing too much of the fighting,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who studies the war in Ukraine. “They want drones to do the fighting.”

The drone’s leading role in combat showed itself in real time on a May afternoon inside a command post of Ukraine’s 5th Center of the International Legion, part of the country’s military intelligence forces, which fought alongside Henadii’s and Mykhailo’s unit near Primorske.

Several men watched a screen streaming feeds from reconnaissance drones over a settlement just south of Primorske. Suddenly, a Russian soldier appeared, sprinting down a dirt road before diving into bushes. Too late — Ukrainian drones had spotted him.

“You will see what the kill zone means,” said a commander, whose call sign is Sour.

Minutes later, two drones arrived and struck near where the soldier had taken cover. A surveillance drone captured the attack, which Times reporters watched live from the command post. A final strike tore away the sheet of metal, exposing the soldier’s body amid the ruins.

“It’s very difficult to survive in such conditions — 99 percent chance of dying,” Sour said.

The Ukrainian military provided the videos in this article, based on requests from The Times to illustrate on-the-ground reporting and battlefield developments described by commanders.

The rise of drones has fueled a debate in Ukraine over whether they could one day replace infantry altogether.

Dmytro Putiata, a former Ukrainian drone operator, said drones were a formidable force multiplier but would never fully replace infantry. Drones can destroy positions, he said, but cannot seize them. Only soldiers can dislodge troops from entrenched dugouts. As for land drones armed with machine guns that have joined some assaults, he asked: “What happens when the battery dies?”

“Infantry was the most crucial thing without drones,” he said, “and it’s still crucial with them." Henadii and Mykhailo learned that lesson the hard way on Oct. 10, a month into their deployment. They had spotted Russian soldiers in nearby buildings and radioed their position. Ukrainian drones had struck, but two soldiers survived and were now running toward Henadii and Mykhailo’s house.

The drones had failed. Now it was the two men's turn.

As the first soldier burst into the yard, Henadii said he shot him dead through a window. The second soldier, running just behind, dropped out of sight. Henadii fired a long burst in his direction and waited three minutes. When he looked again, he said, the soldier’s body was slumped against a fence, dead.

Hours later, another pair of Russian soldiers ran into the yard, having just survived a drone strike. Henadii fired, but missed this time. The Russians took cover behind a wall. Instead of firing at Henadii and Mykhailo, they shouted that they were friendly forces.

It was a familiar case of confusion in the muddled kill zone. Mykhailo, who, like most Ukrainians, can speak Russian, saw a chance to buy time. He answered in Russian, pretending to be a stranded fellow soldier. The exchange lasted less than a minute, until one of the Russians asked for the name of Mykhailo’s commander. The ruse was over.

By then, Henadii had moved to a better firing position. He opened fire. So did Mykhailo. They said they killed the two Russian soldiers.

More deadly firefights followed. “Jan. 20. Jan. 24. Jan. 30. March 3 and 21,” Mykhailo said, reciting the dates from memory. In total, the two men said they had killed nine Russian soldiers, which The Times could not independently confirm.

Living in the Kill Zone

Each Russian soldier they killed posed the same issue: What to do with the body?

Earlier in the war, their unit would have retrieved the corpse and traded it for that of a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Now, few units will risk sending troops into the kill zone to recover the dead.

But in today’s kill zone, a body left in the open is a telltale sign of combat that can reveal a position to drones watching overhead. To avoid being detected, Henadii and Mykhailo dragged most of the bodies inside their house. Rather than live beside corpses, they piled them into one room and stayed in the kitchen. It was winter, and the bodies froze before they could rot, making the smell bearable. Troops who fight through the summer are less fortunate.

To survive, soldiers must leave no trace of their presence. Henadii and Mykhailo said they never fed stray dogs — animals gathering around a house could tip off Russian forces that someone was inside. Nor did they step outside to relieve themselves. They urinated into plastic bottles and defecated into trash bags, which they stowed in the attic. Russia’s Army also appears to have made the shift. On a single day in mid-May, drones made 678 flights across a large section of the southern front, delivering roughly 4,500 pounds of cargo — mostly food, water and ammunition — according to the battlefield reports obtained by The Times.

A Ukrainian company commander, whose call sign is Tor, spends much of his day packing supplies for drones to fly out. His unit stopped delivering food to the front in vehicles. Since November, they are only delivered by drones. On a May morning at his unit’s supply depot, an inconspicuous house north of Primorske, he and fellow officers worked through requests soldiers had radioed in: porridge, bread, canned meat, sausages, even an orthopedic belt for a soldier with back pain. Not every parcel arrives.

Drones are sometimes jammed or shot down, leaving troops without food and water for days. Ukrainian commanders say soldiers often lose significant weight, 20 pounds or more, in the kill zone.

On New Year’s Eve, subzero temperatures drained the batteries of the drones trying to deliver food to Henadii and Mykhailo. That night, they celebrated with two cans of food they still had left.

Drones also brought Mykhailo medicine. The shrapnel wound to his heel that he had sustained earlier in the war left him dependent on painkillers dropped along with his food.

The kill zone makes it nearly impossible to send a medic to check on the wounded or evacuate them. So units send drugs and bandages instead, and talk soldiers through treatment over the radio. Ukrainian soldiers call this “telemedicine.”

Gone is the “golden hour” — the first 60 minutes after a traumatic injury, when prompt treatment offers the best chance of survival. Now, a soldier can lie for days with a tourniquet cinched around a wounded limb, waiting for a vehicle that may never come, according to Ros, a medic serving in Henadii’s and Mykhailo’s brigade. Survival rates for the severely wounded are very low, he said.

It is an experience unlike anything that U.S. troops faced in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said Mr. Lee, the military expert, who served as a Marine in Afghanistan. “It’s way more intense, way more difficult and far more psychologically straining,” he said.

In the end, Henadii and Mykhailo, who were initially told that they would spend about a month at the front, stayed more than six. The Ukrainian Army cannot afford frequent rotations because that would mean more men crossing the kill zone. It also lacks enough replacements.

As weeks turned into months, Henadii and Mykhailo began wondering if they would make it out. A study by Ukraine’s military ombudsman found that the psychological breaking point often comes after 30 to 60 days at the front. Beyond that, many soldiers succumb to anxiety and apathy as they become convinced that they will not survive, the ombudsman’s office said in a written comment.

Henadii and Mykhailo held on to small moments of joy. Homemade sweet pies dropped by drone. Voice messages from their wives, played over the radio.

“Our task was to survive at any cost,” Mykhailo said. 

Exiting the Kill Zone

Finally, on March 22, an officer radioed Henadii and Mykhailo: Two soldiers were on the way to replace them.

An hour later, the soldiers reached the house. “We were overjoyed, though we could hardly believe it,” Henadii recalled. The four men spent the night together, sharing survival tips and mapping enemy positions. At first light, Henadii and Mykhailo set out.

The journey home would be the most dangerous part of their deployment. The kill zone had expanded so much in six months that a mile-long walk in had transformed into a six-mile trek out. It would take them days.

To improve their chances, Maksym, their commander, had planned the route meticulously. He had identified roads poorly visible from the sky and marked houses every 150 yards where they could take cover. Supply packages were dropped in advance at each overnight stop.

As the two men walked, Maksym guided them by radio, correcting their paths by watching a live feed from a reconnaissance drone following them overhead. “Move left. Move right,” Mykhailo recalled the orders. “We zigzagged like hares.”

When they had gone to the front, they said, 90 percent of Primorske’s buildings still stood. Now, nearly all were gone. They moved slowly, worn down by more than 200 days in the kill zone and Mykhailo’s injured heel.

One morning, Henadii and Mykhailo narrowly escaped a Russian drone attack. Ten minutes after they left a house they had slept in, a drone destroyed it, said their commander, Maksym.

Eventually, after four days of walking, they reached the spot where a car would pick them up. They waited another day and a half. Then, on March 27, they were pulled out.

When they arrived at their unit’s command post later that day, they were barely recognizable. Both were much thinner. Mykhailo had grown a thick beard. Henadii, a heavy mustache.