Cheap but lethal Drones help freeze Russian frontline action in Kupiansk

For four months, Russian troops have been trying to seize the eastern Ukrainian village of Synkivka. On a map, this looks easy. Their forward position is on the edge of a forest. It is a mere 500 metres away from the Ukrainian frontline and a shattered group of cottages.

- Luke Harding

Every few days the Russians attack. Their forays across open ground end in the same way: disaster. Armoured vehicles, with men perched on top, speed across a landscape of moon-like craters and splintered trees. Soon it goes wrong. Some blow up on mines; others panic and reverse. The Ukrainians pick off the fleeing infantry with drones and artillery. Typically, all the Russians die.

"It's really fucked up down there," said Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, showing video footage he took from above the battlefield four miles northeast of the city of Kupiansk. The images are gruesome. Bodies can be seen lying in a zigzag trench and frozen hollows. Nearby are the burnt-out carcasses of BMP-1 fighting vehicles, at least 10 of them. Despite this, the Russians keep trying.

Almost two years after Vladimir Putin's all-out invasion, Ukraine has abandoned its offensive.

Instead it is employing a strategy of active defence: keeping the Russians back, and waging the occasional counter-punch.

Moscow, meanwhile, wants to go forward. It has mobilised thousands of troops in the Kupiansk area. Many are former prisoners, recruited directly from jail and serving in "Storm-Z" units.

The Kremlin has two immediate goals. One is to take back Kupiansk, the gateway to Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv. Another is to capture the salient town of Avdiivka, not far from the occupied regional capital of Donetsk. So far Moscow has been unable to achieve either military objective. In the process it has lost huge numbers of troops, tanks and equipment. The difficulties experienced by Russia in Synkivka point to a wider problem facing both armies. "It's a war of armour against projectiles.

At the moment projectiles are winning," Molchanov said. The Russians had some tactical success, flushing out Ukrainian soldiers from the forest and a few villages.