bombing Ukraine\u2019s big cities<\/a> to wear down civilians; for weeks its ground forces have been mounting attacks to claw back territory lost last summer and to seize long-prized Ukrainian redoubts along the eastern front.<\/p>\nWell accustomed to Russian artillery fire, soldiers said that since March they had suffered the additional devastating power of glide bombs, half-ton explosives unleashed from planes that smash through underground bunkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would send them two by two by two, eight in an hour,\u201d said a 27-year-old soldier known as Kit, of the 14th Chervona Kalyna National Guard Brigade. Like others interviewed, Kit identified himself by his call sign, according to military protocol. <\/span>\u201cIt sounds like a jet coming down on you,\u201d he said, \u201clike hell\u2019s gate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The destruction wrought by glide bombs is visible in towns and villages near the front line. The town of Orikhiv, about 12 miles north of Robotyne, once served as a command center for the counteroffensive. Now it is an empty shell, the main street deserted, the school and other buildings split asunder by massive bomb craters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A lone workman, Valera, was riding a bicycle through the town. He said he had stayed despite the heavy bombardment because he had paid work, fixing generators. He lived off humanitarian aid and was feeding 20 stray cats at his home, he said.<\/p>\n
Soldiers moved cautiously in the area, mostly living in basements and staying undercover, out of sight.<\/p>\n
That is because the latest menace is Russia\u2019s use of F.P.V. kamikaze drones, which has forced Ukrainian soldiers largely to abandon vehicles in frontline areas and operate on foot.<\/p>\n
A cheap commercial drone, the F.P.V. \u2014 for first person view \u2014 has become the latest weapon of the moment in the Ukrainian war. It can fly as fast as a car, carries a lethal load of explosives and is guided to its target by a soldier sitting in a bunker several miles away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies are using them to hunt and attack targets because they cut out the delay of relaying back coordinates and requesting artillery strikes. Ukrainian soldiers said they often use the drones instead of artillery because shells were increasingly in short supply and the drones are a cheap, quick weapon for attacks on nearby Russian vehicles, bunkers and infantry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Military units from both sides post videos online of their successful strikes, which end with a scrambled black screen at the moment of detonation. Several Ukrainian drone units allowed journalists from The New York Times to watch live operations from positions near the front line as they tracked <\/span>Russian soldiers and attacked selected targets. <\/p>\nOne unit showed videos of a hit that destroyed Russian surveillance cameras and an antenna on an office building. Another targeted a Russian bunker in a tree line, although the drone was deflected by Russian electronic jamming before impact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Only one in several drones hits its target, and many are lost to jamming and other interference, soldiers said.<\/p>\n
For those on the receiving end of F.P.V. drones, defending and supplying the front line have become increasingly risky.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is extremely dangerous to go by car,\u201d said a Ukrainian National Guardsman, who uses the call sign Varvar. Men of his unit said that since September they had been leaving their armored vehicles and walking in six miles to positions. \u201cYou can only go in on foot,\u201d Varvar said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The men of the 117th Brigade, who were deploying <\/span>to the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region on a recent night, faced a four-mile hike through rain and mud, the intelligence commander said. If they were wounded and captured, Russian troops would execute them, he warned them.<\/p>\nThe long, arduous slog to carry in ammunition and food to supply troops and to carry out the wounded was one reason Ukraine could not sustain its counteroffensive, a company commander, Adolf, 23, said.<\/p>\n
Ambulances and supply vehicles came under fire from kamikaze drones so often that his unit stopped using them, resorting instead to a four-wheeled buggy that volunteer engineers rigged up to carry a stretcher. The buggy was hidden under some trees beside his command post several miles from the front line.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian units are dealing out the same treatment with F.P.V. drones on Russian lines and say they were the first to start using drones to attack targets. But the Russians have copied the tactic and flooded frontline areas with drones in recent weeks, to lethal effect, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy impression is Russia is interested in drones at the state level,\u201d the soldier known as Kit said, but in contrast, Ukraine still largely relied on volunteers and civilian donors for its drone program. \u201cMy sense,\u201d he said, \u201cis the government should be doing more.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Russians were employing subterfuge as well, Planshet said, playing tapes of gunfire on drones to make Ukrainian soldiers think they were under attack, leave the bunkers and reveal their positions.<\/p>\n
Some members of his platoon said the Russians used drones to drop smoke grenades into their trenches. One soldier, who uses the call sign Medic, said it seemed like a kind of tear gas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt causes a very strong pain in the eyes and a fire, like a piece of coal, in your throat and you cannot breathe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Several soldiers donned gas masks to treat the men affected, but when two men in the platoon crawled from the bunker to flee the gas, they were killed by grenades dropped from Russian drones hovering above, soldiers said.<\/p>\n
The toll is heavy for all units along the front. Almost everyone has been wounded or survived a narrow escape <\/span>in recent months, soldiers said.<\/p>\n\u201cWe are short of people,\u201d said an intelligence commander of the 117th Brigade who uses the call sign Banderas, after the actor. \u201cWe have weapons but not enough men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet many remain optimistic. Farther east in the Donetsk region, Maj. Serhii Betz, a battalion commander of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, set out before dawn on a recent day, driving down muddy roads rutted with ice to check on his drone units close to the front line. He invited New York Times journalists along.<\/p>\n
The teams work underground, in bunkers lined with tree trunks and covered with earth. On a computer monitor, the commander switched on a livestream drone feed from a neighboring brigade where a battle was unfolding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n