Ukraine's 'D-Day' Plans To End The Russian Occupation

Bel Trew talks to the key players as Kyiv prepares to strike back against Putin - and break the war's brutal deadlock

- Bel Trew

Against the deadly beat of artillery fire, the drone commander picks his way through the destroyed remains of the village that lies just a few hundred metres away from Russian positions. Around him civilian life is now absent, the remnants frozen in a tableau of hasty and desperate evacuations.

We are in the region of Zaporizhzhia, and he is taking us to meet his unit hiding somewhere near the southeastern frontline of the Ukraine war. The unit need to keep out of sight of Russian drones, which are also flying overhead.

"No one can live here anymore because it's too close to the frontline," Val, 39 the commander of "Vyhor" drone squad says, peering at a clear blue sky. "Only the military are here doing their tasks," he adds, radioing his team who emerge silently from their camouflage into an empty cattle shed.

"We have to move from our spot every two days because we are high-profile targets," says a 31-year-old drone operator known by his codename Odesa, who is readying his equipment for another round of surveillance. "The artillery can't work randomly, they need to see where they are shooting, if they have got the shot.

So we are the eyes. If they take us out, they take out the army's eyes." The Zaporizhzhia region is the often-overlooked southeast corner of Ukraine's now 900-mile (1,500km) frontline. The speedy capture of parts of this region just a week into President Putin's invasion of the country last February helped Moscow forge a strategic land bridge to occupied Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

It also gave the Kremlin control of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, sparking global panic over the risk of a possible meltdown. Missile strikes have caused dangerous outages and left the plant running on emergency diesel generators on more than one occasion.