Inside Ukraine’s Drone Attacks on Russia
2023-09-19 00:38:01
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From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Taverny-Sea, and this is The Daily.
As Ukraine's counteroffensive grinds on, it's increasingly turning to a secret drone program that's hitting targets deep inside Russian territory. Today, I talk to my colleague, Christian Trebert, about the origins of that program, and to Sergey Prytula, a former television host in Ukraine, who is now a key force behind it.
It's Tuesday, September 19th.
Christian, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for having me here.
So, Christian, tell me about how you first came to investigate Ukraine's drone program.
So, in early May, unverified footage appears to show an object flying toward the dome of the Kremlin before bursting into flames.
The whole world was in shock because these two drones attacked the Kremlin.
Tonight, there's a mystery in Moscow, the Kremlin accusing Ukraine of launching drone attacks aimed at killing President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine denies it.
And it was kind of like unthinkable. Of course, the Russian invasion, full scale invasion of Ukraine, had been going on for over a year. But suddenly, like two drones exploding above the Kremlin, was like, wow, they're hitting where Putin is in the heart of Moscow. It was wild.
Does Ukraine have drones that could reach the Kremlin five, six hundred miles from the Ukrainian border?
And it was surprising, because Ukraine doesn't have equipment that does that. Right. So it was sort of like, wait, is this someone inside Russia doing this, a Kremlin attack? Who is this?
Exactly. And that was the big question. Like, who is responsible for this and how could they pull off an attack like this? Because Moscow is hundreds of miles away from the Ukrainian border. So was it someone inside Russia?
Was it Ukraine with some secret weapon?
So I'm part of a team called Visual Investigations. And basically what we're doing is trying to find any visual clue that we can find. Think of a satellite image. Think of a TikTok video, security camera footage. Think of official statements, you name it, to piece together what's going on.
And we try to do that with this attack.
There was security camera footage of those drones, one exploding and one seemingly hitting one of the domes of the Kremlin. So we're like, OK, it's kind of grainy footage. But frame by frame, can we measure the wingspan? Can we match it to something that we have seen before? And we couldn't really find a match.
It was a mystery.
It was an absolute mystery, yeah.
And so then what happened?
So, as we're looking into this, me and my colleagues, right, I get a text message. And it's like, hey, Christian, long time, no speak. Would you like to know more about these drones that hit the Kremlin?
Wait, who's the text message from?
It's a person that I've known for a long time, haven't been in contact for years. Turns out to be this person that texted me is in this homegrown, do-it-yourself, long-range drone program. Basically a secret weapons program that's building a drone that can hit the Kremlin. And I get a photo of a kind of like funky looking drone. And I'm like, wow, this is interesting.
I gotta, I gotta see what's this about.
So what did you do?
We started chatting. We started talking mostly on signal, but it's very secretive, right? Right. And for that reason, people are extremely careful to talk about it.
Right. They don't want to become a target.
Exactly. So it seemed. the best way for me to better understand it was to just go to Ukraine to see some of these drones, to talk to the people involved in it in person.
So I go to Ukraine. I meet my source and I tried to meet as many people more. like one leads to another. And what I start to understand is that it's just not one person or one company or one government agency building one single drone. It's multiple entities within the government, outside of the government, private companies that are all kind of racing to build a drone that can hit the Kremlin, that can cover that long distance.
And we're talking here about very specific type of drone. On the one hand, it's long range, so it can really cover those long distances, for example, from the Ukrainian border, hundreds of miles to the Russian capital, Moscow. And secondly, these drones are one way and one use, meaning they take off, they fly towards their target and then they explode on target. And that's it. That's the lifespan of the drone.
So kamikaze.
Exactly. And this is a pretty novel technology. Ukraine wasn't known to have this. Very little countries around the world actually are known to have this technology, because it's pretty hard. Right.
You need to build something that flies for hundreds of miles and can then also carry a payload, and needs to navigate through air defenses, electronic warfare, you name it.
And what did you learn about how Ukraine managed to develop this technology that so few countries, I mean, I don't think of Ukraine, as, you know, cutting edge military technology place.
So it all started in mid-October last year.
And that's when Russia started hitting Kiev and other Ukrainian cities with kamikaze drones that they had bought from Iran.
Today we woke up to the sound of explosions in Kiev as the Russians launched a massive.
drone attack against this city. Kiev says fragments of this drone shot down in southern Ukraine have Iranian as well as Russian markings.
These are the type of weapons that the U.S. and other Western nations, allied with Ukraine, are not willing to give to Kiev, because they're worried that Kiev will use those weapons sooner or later to indeed strike inside Russia, with whatever the consequences may be if you use Western weapons to strike Moscow, for example.
Right. The Americans don't want to give the Ukrainians stuff to make these things, because that could prompt Ukrainians actually striking the Kremlin and the Kremlin pushing the nuclear button. Right.
So because of that worry, because the West is not willing to give those weapons to Ukraine, Ukrainians were like, OK, we'll have to build them ourselves. So they got together. basically, anyone that has some idea of like, how do we build a drone and scramble together to build this capacity themselves. But it takes, of course, some time and they start repurposing reconnaissance drones that are not intended to explode or to fly and hit a target. And it seems like just trying to reach Moscow, because here and there we see, like posts on Telegram and Russian small villages and communities where they just find a drone, which we identified as being Ukrainian, made in a forest.
I was being told by one of the people involved in the drone program, you know, like, you know, sometimes we hit a tree or a power line. So it doesn't really work or has the intended effect yet. But then they also start asking publicly for money. Volunteer fundraisers start saying, hey, you know, we want to raise money for a long range striking capability for Ukraine.
OK, so it wasn't actually going that. well. They're starting to repurpose things. The things hit trees, not going very far. They need money.
And it reaches this kind of fundraising stage.
But slowly but surely, it seems they're stepping up their game.
Ukraine is actually reaching a point where they can reach Moscow, and that's when the strike on the Kremlin happens.
Right. The strike that launched you on this reporting journey in the first place.
That's right. And it was very clear. it wasn't a lucky shot because that same month, multiple drones hit Moscow.
And what are we talking about, Christian, in terms of the numbers of these strikes? What does your reporting say?
Well, where we saw like, just like a handful in late 2022, late last year, we have seen the amount of attacks double in the past three months alone. Wow. So it's really increasing a lot. I talked to one of these drone developers and he sent me a video.
And this video shows one of the drones currently under production.
And it has these very like significant sound, like it's sometimes called, like a flowing lawnmower. It's very like a kind of scary sound. I get that video and signal with the comment, this is going to be the number one hit track in Moscow this fall.
Yeah, I mean, that sound, right, it is terrifying. I mean, I've been in conflict zones where I've heard the sound of a drone. I didn't know what it was immediately, but I learned over time. And it's this. it's this sound that makes you feel like you were a tiny ant, and there's a foot above you about to crush you.
Yeah, and I think it's a big part of why Ukraine is launching these long range drones into Russia, because, indeed, that sound, imagine being woken up in Moscow and you hear that sound and you're not sure what's going on. It happens again and again and again. And someone told me, let them feel the war. If you support the occupation and the invasion of Ukraine, you should not be able to feel safe.
OK, so it's scary. It might be rattling people in Russia. But is it meaningful militarily? Like, has this program claimed credit for significant damages or killed anyone in Russian territory?
So far, it hasn't killed anyone yet. But I think we shouldn't underestimate what those drones have already done and could do in the future, because we have seen in Pskov, which is pretty far away from Ukraine, at a military air base, they were able to destroy two very expensive cargo aircraft of the Russian Air Force and damage two others. And besides hitting military targets like that, they've also hit infrastructure like oil depots, oil storage sites. And this, of course, could affect the Russian military logistically when they're sending new troops into Ukraine. But besides that, Russia also needs to make decisions.
Hey, are we going to place our fancy air defense unit in the suburbs of Moscow and replace it from Ukraine? And these are strategic decisions Russia needs to make. And that could affect also the battlefield in Ukraine, of course.
Oh, interesting. So we have this fancy air defense stuff. It's in Ukraine now. That's where we're fighting the war. But, whoa, maybe we need to bring it to Russia, which in itself would be an acknowledgement that, holy moly, something's going wrong, right?
Absolutely. Because it is a hard choice for Russia probably to make, right? Because are you going to defend your capital city, including the house of the president and including a very important military air base that clearly right now don't have full protection from these drones? Or are you going to leave it in Ukraine? What I understand from talking with sources in Ukraine's military intelligence agency, this is indeed what they're hoping to do, force Russia to make hard decisions where to deploy their air defenses.
And, Christian, what's the big picture here? Like, what do we think the ultimate effect is? I mean, I remember our colleague Mike Schwartz, you know, I called him when I first started seeing these drones and I said, what's going on here? I mean, is this important? And he said, you know, one thing is for sure, this war will not end until it reaches Moscow.
Is that what we're looking at here?
Time will tell. But I think it's such a new thing to see that these Ukrainian drones are hitting Moscow, hitting Moscow now repeatedly and hitting military targets repeatedly. And with it seemingly only to increase, we may seem that there is more pressure on Russian civilians, but also on Russian elites that are still close to Putin, that will feel worried, like, wait, can it hit my house? Would they target my house? And I think instilling that fear may create some change around people that are closer to Putin.
So you went to Ukraine, you found this nascent drone program that was largely built from scratch, and you watched as it became more and more effective. And it's all based on this ingenuity and scrappiness that the Ukrainians have really, by dint of necessity, right? That's all they got. But, of course, that same scrappiness comes with its own risk. You know, when a program like this is cobbled together, totally ad hoc, using private donations, individual donations funneled through multiple channels, things can get pretty messy pretty quickly.
Like, you know, maybe the money stops flowing. Maybe people get greedy. There's a lot that can go wrong. How do you see the program at this point?
Yeah, I think there's these different kind of groups that are all building different drones and they're even maybe competing a little bit with each other sometime. There are two intelligence agencies in Ukraine. We know the military intelligence agency launches their drone into Russia, but now the internal intelligence agency also announced they have a long range drone.
So the equivalent of the Ukrainian FBI is developing its own program, even though the CIA already has one that hit Russia.
Right. But then outside of the government, you also have these private individuals and companies that are also all trying to develop their drones. And sometimes it went to a point that they don't really even communicate with each other, are not really aware of each other, what they're doing. And production needs to be rammed up if they really want to continuously hit Russia, because Russia is adapting. Each time one of those drones is downed, Russia can look at the technology inside and say, OK, we need to make maybe adaptations in our air defense here and there.
So each time Ukraine needs to step up their game and they need to basically have a larger capacity of these drones. And the question will be, are they able to ramp up production like that?
And what is that? a question of?
It's mostly, it seems, a question of money.
And right now, most of that money is coming from this hodgepodge group of volunteer fundraisers.
People that had little, if anything, to do with the military before the war started. Social media influencers, comics, people who had basically zero idea of what a kamikaze drone was. And now they're at the center of this drone war.
After the break, we talk to one of the main figures behind Ukraine's emerging.
drone program.
I'm Julie Turkowitz, I'm a reporter at The New York Times. I have been trying to understand changes in migration. So I traveled with photographer Federico Rios to the Darien Gap, this hot, mountainous, 70 mile stretch of jungle straddling the border of Colombia and Panama. We're hiking through a river just like covered in mud. Many used to think that this route was impassable, but thousands have been risking their lives to pass through the Darien, almost all in the hopes of making it to the United States.
We spent nine days hiking through the gap and weeks building trust and relationships with migrants, with smugglers, with migration authorities, to even be able to do this reporting. We interviewed hundreds of people who have made this journey to try and grasp what's making them go to these lengths to find a new life. New York Times journalists spend time in these places to help you understand what's really happening there. You can support this kind of journalism by subscribing to The New York Times.
Hi, hi, you hear me, you see me, I'm fine, right?
Yes. OK, so I'm Maria.
Nice to. Hi, Maria. Nice to meet you.
Sorry, you will be here like in a couple of minutes, two minutes. OK, he just went for some quick call. OK, so we are now in our main office, where all the meetings, all the.
fundraising activities are happening. Great.
With a beautiful map of Ukraine, a small tour of our museum.
Oh, look at the museum. Yeah, this is called Russian Corner. What is it?
You know this guy, right?
Hi, nice to meet you.
So we go into the room and a couple of minutes and we'll start, OK?
Great, great.
OK. My name is Serhii Pretula, I'm 42 years, I'm staying in Kyiv right now, and I'm an owner of one of the biggest charity foundation in Ukraine.
Your colleague, Maria, was just showing me around and she showed me a corner where there were some weapons collected there. Tell me about that.
She showed you Russian Corner, we call him. That's like a little museum that we have here in our office. That's the place with a lot of trophies that our military bring to our foundation.
Trophies like downed pieces of Russian planes?
Pieces of Russian jets and Russian helicopters. We have some devices from tanks, like to say thank you for your help, guys.
Right, so that's your Russian Corner. Tell me what's on your T-shirt.
I'm not sure that it's a good idea to answer your question, because that means some bad words. It's like we wish them to die.
Serhii, let me go back for a minute. Where did you grow up? Where was that? What was it like?
I was born in the Soviet Union. I grew up in the 1980s in a small village in the west part of Ukraine. And that was a time when we had no FM radio stations, when we had no YouTube, we had no Spotify or something like that. But that was a time when the Soviet Union was not popular to speak Ukrainian language, because that's the language of village people.
Right. It was seen as not a very prestigious thing, fancy thing, to be speaking Ukrainian, right? Russian was the language everybody should be speaking in Ukraine.
If you wanted to build a good career, you need to speak Russian language. So I'm thankful to my grandma and my grandpa, who teach me to read, to write, to count and also to sing Ukrainian songs.
And after that, Soviet Union collapsed. when I was 10 years old, I started to be a Ukrainian in 1997 in Ternopil, and I started to work on radio station when I was 17 years old. That was what I loved so much.
And after that, we had the Orange Revolution in Kyiv, in our capital.
Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy Ukrainians in the streets today protested against the results of the presidential election.
And I moved to capital on this revolution.
This was time that I loved, because many people start to speak Ukrainian, you know, and they start to love this city more and more.
And I find some friends here and they invite me to work on a big TV channel and I start to be a TV presenter of morning show on TV show.
What was that TV show called? Wake Up. Appropriately named.
Yep.
That was my time of rising, when everybody in Ukraine starts to know who I am, because I was those guys who helped them to wake up every day. And who told them that you are the best people in the world, and I wish you good luck.
But. I was a TV presenter in dozens of different shows, like maybe you have also in the United States, we call it Battle of Sexes.
I was one of the most popular Ukrainian speaking TV hosts in time. When mostly managers on TV channels, they were looking for Russian speaking presenters. And that's why I create my own comedy show, Varyaty Show.
That was first 100 percent Ukrainian speaking comedy show in Ukraine.
And my son, when he was maybe six years old, he asked me once, Dad, do you have some superpower? Because he was a fan of Iron Man. And I started to understand that now is a serious situation. I don't want to disappoint my son. And I said to my son, I have a superpower and I want to show you my superpower.
And I take my son with me to other city where I have my show with my colleagues. And I told my son, look, what do you see? He said, many people. I said, yes, there's more than a thousand people and they all are different. Men, women, young, old, rich, poor, with good education, without education.
Some of them drive cars, some of them take bus to be on our show. But now I want to show you my superpower. And I made some jokes and 1000 different people start to laughing in one moment.
And I just turn my head to my son and ask him, so do you understand which superpower I have? And he was so impressed that his father can do some magic with thousands of different people. I can do in one moment altogether. But it was enough for me that I'm also a cool man like Iron Man.
Yep, yep, I try my best for my kids. They are also big motivation for me to do my job here in our foundation better every day, because I really miss them and I want them to come back to Kyiv, to our apartments, where I feel myself absolutely broken because I'm alone.
Where are they now, Sergei?
In more safety place.
In a more safe place?
Yeah, and also I understand that our foundation, all work, that we do here to support our military, that it makes Russian secret services also not happy.
Right. Interested in your location and your foundation, right?
Yes. And that's why it's also about to protect my kids, because it's really dangerous for them to stay with me in Kyiv.
Sergei, tell me about Russia and your relationship with Russia.
One year and a half ago, when Russia start full-scale invasion, I shoot a video.
Where I call to Russian TV stars, pop stars, because I know dozens and dozens of them by myself.
I said, please, you have millions and millions followers in your social media. You have dozens of millions people of your audience who love you and who trust you and your army killing your audience in Ukraine. People who bring you money and people who applaud you on your shows. And if you will call your people to stop this invasion.
But no one said stop this war.
And what did you make of that?
Just forget about them and start to do my job, what I can do better. I like to unite people, to try to organize people with some crowdfunding campaigns, to raise money and to help destroy Russian troops. And the motto of our foundation is Invincible when United.
So you set up a foundation. Can you tell me about the moment that you started raising money for the drones?
OK, so there was a situation. in October last year. My wife visited me in Kyiv and in the window of our apartment, she just watched like Russian missile destroyed house a few hundred meters from our home. And she was afraid. And we run to the bomb shelter.
And I was sitting there and I read in Facebook and in Twitter thousands and thousands Ukrainians. They were in fury because Russia attacked Ukraine with dozens and dozens missiles. That was terrible day in our history. And people were so angry with this Russian attack.
What were you feeling?
That's a hard question, because many different things you think. during missiles destroyed your city, because one missile was exactly a few minutes from kindergarten where my daughter was. God bless, not at this moment, but she will never visit this kindergarten. It's destroyed. So that's yeah, that's some.
Some emotions like, of course, you're afraid because I want to be sincere with you. It's really. it's really bad emotion when you understand that next missile can can kill you and your wife. And of course, I was angry with myself, because. You can do nothing.
You have no power to protect your city, your family. Yes. And and you're angry also with all our partners from abroad because they are so slowly with air defense systems.
And our partners support us, and we're really thankful for all help that we have. Thanks for all tanks, APCs, guns, everything else. Artillery systems. But it's not enough, because we have a war with Russia.
So, after that. You're trying to find some some way how to what you can do at this moment.
So we start confining campaign.
And how did you do it? Was it just something you put on Facebook, or what was it?
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube.
And we rise a little bit less 10 million USD in one day.
You raise 10 million U.S. dollars in one day.
A little bit less, maybe nine point six. And we call this campaign for revenge.
For revenge.
Yes. We tell people that we will find some way how to revenge. And that's why we choose drones with long range.
And we bought big UAVs, kamikazes also. There's like one way tickets to Russians.
Did you have any previous experience with drones, Sergey? Anything in your normal civilian life that would have brought you in contact with them?
Of course not. Of course not. No, no, no. Sorry. Once, once during my wedding, there was like a cameraman, but not with a camera, but with a drone.
So he filmed our wedding party with drones. So that was only one of my experiences.
That was your experience?
Yes. But if you want to survive, you will develop your skills. No one here in my foundation had no such experience like we start to have after the Polskaya invasion. I have architectures here. I have guys from IT business also.
I'm a TV presenter. I didn't know one year and a half ago that I will raise more than $130 million in next one year and a half. But that's a total war and we need to do everything we can to support our soldiers.
Sergey, I guess I'm curious what you think is the most important role that long range drones are playing right now? Like, is the objective to destroy buildings or even kill people?
Mostly, drones don't kill people. They destroy some infrastructure, buildings or some military objects. I heard maybe you heard also a few days ago in the Russian city Pskov, four big Russian jets were burning. I don't know how it happened. Maybe someone smoked in the not right place.
But some people told me that maybe, maybe it was happened because of drones attack.
Yes. I myself, Sergey, wrote a news headline about that. And the news headline I wrote was that drones struck in many regions of Russia overnight. Yeah. Hitting and destroying four large aircraft in the Pskov region.
So we said it was underscoring the Ukrainian's ability to reach deep inside Russia with the war effort.
Deeper and deeper. It's really very important Russians to start feel the same emotions like Ukrainians. If you will stay in Bob shelter every night with your kids, maybe you will ask some questions to your government. Maybe.
So is part of the power of these long range drones that you're able to take this war to Russia and possibly awaken them to this war, as you were unsuccessfully trying to do when you were trying to appeal to Russian celebrities?
Yep. To send the message to Russian society that two can play this game.
Have you seen any signs that it's working, that the drones are breaking through to Russians in this way?
Yes, of course. We are searching Russian media or telegram channels and we find information that everything, everything work.
Everything work, meaning the drones that you funded hit their targets?
Yes.
The drones that hit in Pskov, were those the drones that you funded?
I didn't tell you nothing about Pskov and about our drones, but just believe me that I'm happy how our military used our drones that we bought after a confounding campaign for revenge.
What are your plans for the future?
Look, I'm a citizen of Ukraine. I want to live in a better country. I want to come back to my previous life. I want my family back to Ukraine. I want my people stop dying with this war.
That's why that's not my choice. That's my duty to do everything that I can do till the victory day. And I will do it.
People will fight. This unity is still strong. That's Ukrainian superpower to organize ourselves. And we will never forget and never forgive.
Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky, visits the United States this week, his second trip since Russia invaded last year. He will attend the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, and then will travel to Washington, where he will meet with congressional leaders and with President Biden to lobby for military aid.
We'll be right back.
Here's what else you should know today. On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that, quote, agents of the government of India carried out the killing of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June. The leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a strong supporter of an independent Sikh homeland, was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center. Speaking in the House of Commons, Trudeau said that he raised India's involvement directly with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Group of Twenty summit earlier this month. He said the allegation was based on intelligence gathered by the Canadian government.
And five Americans who'd been imprisoned in Iran were allowed to leave the country on Monday after two years of high stakes negotiations. In exchange, the United States agreed to unfreeze six billion dollars in Iranian oil revenue and to dismiss federal charges against five Iranians accused of violating U.S. sanctions. The announcement came as President Joe Biden and President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran were scheduled to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders on Tuesday.
Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison, Mary Wilson, and Claire Tennis-Sketter. It was edited by Liz O'Balin and Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marianne Lozano, Dan Powell, and Rowan Nemesto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.
That's it for the daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.
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