The Times joins an unmanned aerial reconnaissance and strike unit from Ukraine’s 414th Brigade as it attempts to cut off Russia from the region
Maxim Tucker
October 5, 2026
The Times
Between shifts piloting flying bombs, the Ukrainian soldier drags on a cigarette as he recalls the happy years he spent living in Britain with his wife and baby daughter. “I used to be a software developer and lived near Queen’s Park. I really loved London,” he says outside the drone laboratory of sixth battalion from Ukraine’s 414th Brigade, an unmanned aerial reconnaissance and strike unit known as “Magyar’s Birds”.
Awarded his nom de guerre “Curly Moustache” for the cossack-style handlebars above his beard, he returned to fight for his country at the start of President Putin’s full-scale invasion.
His life today looks very different. Ukrainian fighter jets, flying round-the-clock sorties to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones, scream through the skies overhead. Over the past four-and-a-half years, he has spent only two months with his family. “I try to call them almost every day. When I joined the army my daughter was a little over one year old, so if I didn’t have this opportunity to call with video, to speak to her, she wouldn’t even remember me,” he says.
Explosions from Russian drones that get through Ukrainian defences boom in the near distance. The men and women of the battalion’s mid-range strike company barely register the blasts. The Russian attacks have become routine to them. And they know that tonight, they will have an opportunity to exact a small slice of revenge.
Inside the laboratory, a sprawling warehouse complex, pilots and engineers are modifying German and Ukrainian-made long-range strike drones for combat use. Most of the improvements are “classified”, Curly Moustache says. “We are experimenting all the time with different kind of technologies and we test those new technologies in combat. Some of them fail miserably, some of them really have an impact on the battlefield,” he says as he tinkers with a heavy bomber drone.
Today, two key innovations are shaping the war more than any other. Ukraine’s Starlink satellite terminals relay video feeds from their drones, allowing them to hit moving targets at extreme distances. Satellite access also allows Ukrainian troops secure internet communications and almost real-time reconnaissance images. “It’s a major, major game changer, it allows us to start cutting off Russian logistics in the deep rear. And that’s having a direct impact on the battlefield because Russians are having problems with delivery of ammunition, personnel, rounds, fuel to the front line,” says Curly Moustache.
However, Russia has cheap, Chinese-produced miniature turbo-jet engines, allowing Russia to bomb Ukraine’s big cities day and night with waves of fast drones. For now, only expensive western interceptor missiles are capable of bringing them down, and they are in short supply.
Both sides are scrambling to engineer the enemy’s advantage for themselves. In the meantime, they have allowed two apparently conflicting narratives to emerge about who is winning the war. On the one hand, Ukraine is forcing Russian troops backwards on the front line. Yet the Kremlin is also pounding Ukrainian cities with an intensity not seen since the first year of the war, leaving them facing a sub-zero winter without power, heating or basic sanitation as their supply of western-produced missiles runs dry.
Overseeing the battalion drone lab is Joyce, another former IT professional named for his love of the Irish writer. His team load the finished drones into containers, then drive them to the launch site. There they assemble the aircraft under cover of a tree line as the sun sets. “The enemy intelligence couldn’t see us from the drones. It’s kind of OK because there is distance from the enemy’s positions to this place,” he explains.
Only when darkness falls do the launch team emerge into the open field, hauling three drones out on their catapults. The whine of the first aircraft’s propeller pierces the night, only to be drowned out by the roar of the rocket booster that propels it into the air with a blinding flash.
Yet within minutes, an enemy jet-powered drone is roaring fast towards the team at the launch site. The soldiers run for cover, leaving their drones in the open. At the last minute, a Ukrainian air defence team intercepts the Russian aircraft, sending it smashing into the ground only 500 metres away.
Joyce’s team race to get the next two drones off the ground before they can be targeted again. Even then, they still have another seven to launch. Once the drones are in the air, Curly Moustache and his fellow pilots take remote control of the aircraft from the company command centre. Their targets are Russian logistic routes deep behind the frontline, with the ultimate aim of completely cutting off Crimea from Russia.
They fly for miles across Russia-controlled territory, but the roads are empty. “This is a road that leads to Donetsk city. I’m hoping to find something juicy here, like a big truck,” says Curly Moustache as he flies low over the tarmac. “It used to be very busy, but since we started working, it’s almost empty now.”
So desolate are the highways, some pilots are diverted to strike Russian command posts identified by earlier reconnaissance, given away by antennas outside. One loses signal while still over Ukrainian territory, apparently shot down by friendly fire. Another suffers engine trouble and crashes shortly after take off.
The next Ukrainian drones hit their targets one after another. Russian trucks, fortifications, troop deployment points are struck in quick succession.
The tempo of the company’s work is furious. Fuelled by energy drinks and a visceral hatred of their enemy, the company counts 200 completed missions in the past 20 days. For Kaijo, one of the growing number of women who volunteer to become pilots, the fight is personal. “I have three nieces and nephews, and I have three godchildren,” she says. “I decided that I want them to live in a country where they can choose their own path and their own opportunities, and choose the language in which they communicate.”
Maxim Tucker was Kyiv correspondent for The Times between 2014 and 2017 and is now an editor on the foreign desk. He has returned to report from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. He advises on grant making in the former Soviet countries for the Open Society Foundations and prior to that was Amnesty International’s Campaigner on Ukraine and the South Caucasus. He has also written for The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Newsweek and Politico.