00:00This is what happens in Ukraine's kill zone.
00:03Drones hunt and kill soldiers like prey.
00:06It's an area surrounding the front line that's so dangerous, so deep, that it's slowed Russia's
00:11spring offensive to a crawl, just by killing so many Russian soldiers.
00:16They have to know if they come, they will be killed or wounded instantly in big numbers.
00:22Could other countries set up similar kill zones?
00:25Might that become an established tactic for states facing a hostile Russia?
00:30The lesson also for everybody on the eastern flank is to think about how to increase lethality.
00:37But before we think about the strategy of setting up copies, what is the kill zone?
00:43We asked DW Ukraine correspondent Nick Connolly.
00:46He's been there.
00:47The kill zone is basically the depth along the front line in which mainly very cheap drones
00:53can create huge damage.
00:55So previously, a couple of years ago, at the beginning of this war, we would have spoken
00:59of maybe a few kilometers deep.
01:01Now that's 20 to 30 kilometers deep, depending on where you go and who you ask.
01:05That's 20 or 30 kilometers of drone-infested territory controlled by each side.
01:11This map shows a rough representation of the contested zone along Ukraine's front line.
01:16It's impossible to show exactly because the drones and their pilots move around.
01:20If we look at satellite imagery around the battleground city of Pokrovsk, you see it doesn't look
01:25like what you'd expect.
01:27Not many troops.
01:28Soldiers from both sides have to hide their every move in this zone.
01:32And there are barely any tanks either.
01:34Hardly any vehicles at all.
01:36They're just too easy for drones to find and blow up.
01:39Nick Connolly ventured into the Pokrovsk kill zone recently with Ukrainian troops.
01:44They could only drive so far, then the soldiers had to walk up to 15 kilometers to reach their
01:49positions close by the Russians.
01:52One Ukrainian soldier told Nick what happened one time trying to get in.
01:55Nick Connolly ventured into a car.
01:57We started to drive in front of the home.
02:01Two FPVs flew in one meter from the car.
02:03There was a very interesting situation.
02:05We were flying from one point to 15 kilometers, so on 2 kilometers.
02:11We were flying from the Russian, their DRGs, so we were flying from their DRGs.
02:24let's pull back out if you add both sides of the kill zone that's a strip 50 or 60 kilometers
02:31wide
02:31running the entire 1200 plus kilometers of the front line an area where conventional big
02:37operations are extremely difficult if not impossible we asked nick if either side could
02:42really mount an offensive and achieve a breakthrough under these conditions those huge
02:47russian tank and armored vehicle attacks we saw being war definitely over they didn't work
02:51particularly well right at the beginning of this war but now even less so and we've seen lots of
02:56russian troops particularly out on foot in small groups sometimes on quad bikes or motorbikes
03:01sometimes even on horseback trying to get through hide so if big offensives are out that means the
03:08war is made up of thousands of little moments like here where two russian soldiers surrender to a
03:14robot in the kill zone sometimes enough of those moments come together for one side to claim a
03:19forward position as conquered territory russia says it controls pokrovsk after years of intense
03:24assault yet the city lies within the kill zone do they really control it at the beginning of this
03:30war you would have images of the russian flag going up over ukrainian towns and cities and that would be
03:35played on tv and there would be quite a lot of fanfare around that and now the version the 2025
03:42-26
03:42version of that is pokrovsk where you have various clips of various russian units with vips from
03:48moscow come to visit basically dashing around the ruins of pokrovsk holding up a flag but not able
03:53to with any kind of uh with any kind of security put up a flag and be there without looking
04:00over
04:00their shoulders so i think holding territory becomes a whole lot difficult more difficult
04:05and you're only really securely in control of a city once the opponent is 30 40 kilometers away
04:11for ukraine the kill zone eases one of its big military problems recruiting soldiers
04:17because it is a lot easier to recruit people to convince people to train the drone pilot than to
04:23take that risk of being in the very very front of the infantry lines right there are pretty harrowing
04:29stories that do the rounds here in ukraine of people who are sometimes stuck in those dugouts
04:34sometimes just a kilometer or so away from the russian positions sometimes for a month two months even
04:41more than that hundreds of days and there are kind of extraordinary pictures of how people change in
04:45that time the beards they grow the kind of sense of them aging decades in the space of a couple
04:50of
04:50months because it's simply too dangerous for them to be evacuated right they have to wait for
04:54some kind of distraction or extreme weather that prevents russian drones from attacking them when
05:00they're taken out and that is just something that you know it's very hard to sell to anyone for more
05:05on
05:05what this means for the war's long-term prospects we spoke with nico lange of the institute for risk
05:10analysis and international security could the kill zone make the war unsustainable for russia or even
05:16push moscow into peace talks i think putin has the intention to keep his war effort going but it
05:23changes the war russia is not advancing russia has now also to suffer more strikes in russia russia has
05:31financial problems russia may have to return to more violent methods of recruitment again and cannot pay
05:38the recruits needs more recruits so slowly i think it shifts the advantage into ukraine's favor and produces
05:48a dilemma on the russian side how to continue the war but i would not go as so far that
05:55i would say oh
05:56this now uh will change putin's calculation putin has i think all intention to continue this war even
06:03if uh the letality is higher he's losing more soldiers we should have no illusions about that
06:09the elephant in the room is the u.s president donald trump pulled the plug on intelligence sharing with
06:15ukraine once and could do it again would ukraine be able to maintain its kill zone without the americans
06:21and without help from say elon musk's starlink could the ukrainian network work on its own most of that
06:27intelligence comes from ukrainian reconnaissance drones that are just patrolling up and down those
06:32front lines feeding everything in ukraine has a platform a battlefield management platform called
06:38delta that lots of european countries are pretty jealous of that feeds in basically and fillets all
06:42the information coming from from drones from commercial satellites from other sources to basically show
06:47commanders on the ground what is happening where what resources they have and also what resources
06:52the russian side has and also using ai to actually predict how russian forces will behave based on
06:58previous experience that the other big advantage about this most of this technology is commercial
07:03technology ukraine can buy lots of this kit and put it together here on the world's markets it
07:08doesn't have to wait for donald trump to give an export license or for big weapons companies to
07:14slowly fire up production uh and demand years of of orders in return for doing so so that's something
07:20that they can do now in a hurry and you know they think just stay more agile than the russian
07:25side
07:25and they've got basically the world's it uh ai community behind them we've got a minister of defense
07:32here in ukraine who comes from it he was previously the minister of digital transformation and they are
07:39trying to basically sell this as an opportunity to the world's ai and other companies to test their
07:45models and they're also saying look we're not just asking for something we actually have data we have
07:51a huge amount of data about how modern warfare is fought and that is something that you're going
07:55to need to train your models so could ukraine export its kill zone systems to other countries
08:00in the region that are feeling threatened by russia in the east it's a legitimate method of deterrence
08:07you need i think a set of military capabilities for that but um cheap ammunition loitering
08:14ammunition drones are certainly a part of that configuration what we see in the kill zone or
08:21what we don't see in the kill zone but what is there is also very strong capabilities in electronic
08:26warfare and i think we need that also in the baltics and everywhere at the eastern flank so there are
08:33very clear lessons here but the maybe the biggest lesson is this mental lesson of not focusing on
08:42territory and not counting tanks but increasing on the message and on the capability uh to have a very
08:51high lethality instantly and make this clear to the russian side um and i think the baltic states are
09:00already working closely with ukraine on that it's more for the more central europeans like germany
09:08to take that session session that lesson seriously and not have illusions of how to conduct warfare
09:15against russia even more broadly will the example of ukraine's kill zone redefine how governments and
09:21militaries see victory will it eliminate the idea of actually winning a war in the sense that we're used to
09:27there's not there's not much room for you know brilliant operations and for tactics it's just
09:35it's just uh about killing as many as possible as quickly as possible and perhaps this extreme
09:42lethality is what countries with threatening neighbors will have to be prepared to inflict ready
09:47to set up kill zones along their borders if need be in ukraine it might just mean its kill zone
09:52becomes the
09:53de facto border long term and for russia this would mean a forever war
Comments