Drone warfare has transformed parts of the Ukrainian landscape into dystopian vignettes, with measures taken by security forces and civilians to protect themselves creating surreal-looking artifacts and landmarks dotted across villages and towns.
The denizens of Dnipro dwell in a dull, dark pall, with only a few hours of light on overcast, short winter days and long nights without light. Many city lights are shut off at set hours to hinder the sight of prowling enemy drones, one Ukrainian officer said, but repeated strikes on substations had also damaged the electricity grid. When viewed in the evening from afar, the city would be abandoned, were it not for the headlights of cars and the workings of the ubiquitous private generators that occupied its streets.
The city on its namesake river bears the marks of drone impacts. Five hundred meters from the Menorah Center, drones made landfall a few weeks ago, killing two and tearing up surrounding buildings. One strike outside a Jewish school a few months ago had destroyed the building’s windows. A large construction project replaced the school’s front yard, installing a bomb shelter for both school and public use. Occasionally, city blocks will be host to a gutted building, a result of missile or drone attacks. Most nights, the low moan of air raid sirens echoed throughout the city, but the warning areas were so vast and inexact that people usually ignored them.
Drone warfare changes frontline Ukraine's landscape
Dnipro was not the Western limit of the unmanned aircraft’s reach. Kryvyi Rih apartment complexes still have gouges in their bellies from drone impacts. Between Pavlograd and Pokrovsk, vehicles travel along thoroughfares under a tunnel of netting to catch suicide drones. The military vehicles have jamming devices affixed to them, or are covered in “Mad Maxian” metal contraptions and “cope cages.” Rusty metal structures rattle around the cars and armored vehicles as they climb through potholes.
The Ukrainian military also reinforces areas likely to be targeted by a strike. Abandoned buildings, compounds, and underground cellars in villages and towns in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast have become home to command posts, logistics hubs, workshops, and barracks. Thick forests are home to motorpools, with diesel trucks and trailers hidden under camouflage and tall evergreens. Next to each vehicle is a ramp leading deep into the black Ukrainian earth, to protect them from shrapnel should intensive fire find them.
Other defenses unrelated to drones have also left deep marks on the earth. New trenches are being dug along the road to Pokrovsk. Some are filled with coils of razor wire, and others are laid between large dirt berms and the two-meter-long trenches. They’re often accompanied by dragons’ teeth – thick concrete pyramids arranged along the long maws of trenches. The multi-layered barriers stretch across the wide Ukrainian fields. Like dragon’s teeth, metal porcupine barriers have become standard fixtures along checkpoints and city entrances.
On Monday, a large explosion shook one of the villages east of Pavlograd. A thick column of black smoke writhed upward into the sky. Soldiers and citizens peered at the smoke with curiosity, but if the impact had already occurred, then at least some of the danger had passed. It wasn’t blasts but buzzing that drew eyes to scan the sky.