"SOON AFTER THE RUSSIAN INVASION of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, residents of the city of Kyiv knew they were in a fight for survival. Over the border with Belarus a colossal massing of Russian troops, armor, and matériel had been building for months. Then, at the outset of the invasion, Russian forces readied for a major push on what was still, at this stage, their primary goal: capture Ukraine’s capital and overthrow its government.
The centerpiece of this concentration of force was a column of trucks, tanks, and heavy artillery some forty kilometers long—a ground offensive on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. It began moving toward the city. On paper the Ukrainians were hopelessly outmatched. Kyiv seemed to be days, maybe hours, from falling.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, a unit of about thirty Ukrainian soldiers wearing night vision goggles rode quad bikes through the forests around the capital that evening. They dismounted near the column’s head and launched jerry-rigged drones equipped with small explosives. These took out a handful of lead vehicles. Those disabled vehicles then clogged up the central road. Surrounding fields were muddy and impassable. The column, facing freezing weather and faltering supply lines, ground to a halt. Then the same small unit of drone operators managed to blow up a critical supply base using the same tactics, depriving the Russian army of fuel and food.
From here the Battle of Kyiv turned. The greatest buildup of conventional military muscle in a generation was humbled, sent back to Belarus in embarrassing disarray. This semi-improvised Ukrainian militia was called Aerorozvidka. A ragtag volunteer band of drone hobbyists, software engineers, management consultants, and soldiers, they were amateurs, designing, building, and modifying their own drones in real time, much like a start-up. A lot of their equipment was crowdsourced and crowdfunded." ©️
The centerpiece of this concentration of force was a column of trucks, tanks, and heavy artillery some forty kilometers long—a ground offensive on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. It began moving toward the city. On paper the Ukrainians were hopelessly outmatched. Kyiv seemed to be days, maybe hours, from falling.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, a unit of about thirty Ukrainian soldiers wearing night vision goggles rode quad bikes through the forests around the capital that evening. They dismounted near the column’s head and launched jerry-rigged drones equipped with small explosives. These took out a handful of lead vehicles. Those disabled vehicles then clogged up the central road. Surrounding fields were muddy and impassable. The column, facing freezing weather and faltering supply lines, ground to a halt. Then the same small unit of drone operators managed to blow up a critical supply base using the same tactics, depriving the Russian army of fuel and food.
From here the Battle of Kyiv turned. The greatest buildup of conventional military muscle in a generation was humbled, sent back to Belarus in embarrassing disarray. This semi-improvised Ukrainian militia was called Aerorozvidka. A ragtag volunteer band of drone hobbyists, software engineers, management consultants, and soldiers, they were amateurs, designing, building, and modifying their own drones in real time, much like a start-up. A lot of their equipment was crowdsourced and crowdfunded." ©️