{"id":22093,"date":"2025-08-25T12:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T12:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/22093\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T12:10:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T12:10:10","slug":"we-are-doing-everything-to-ensure-you-see-war-only-on-your-tv-screens-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/22093\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We are doing everything to ensure you see war only on your TV screens\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The drone pilots had almost reached their position under cover of darkness when they heard the buzzing sound that every soldier in Ukraine dreads. \u201cWe threw ourselves on the ground and I glimpsed a green light. Then it exploded,\u201d says Samokat (Scooter). \u201cI stood up and looked to see if my arms and legs were still attached. I saw two comrades crawling and I pulled them to the dugout. Then I went back for the others.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am sitting at a table in a house in Donetsk oblast, about 40km from Russian lines. The single-storey bungalow has a walled garden and ferocious guard dogs. Its inhabitants, the Hellish Hornets drone reconnaissance platoon, rotate to several dugouts on the front line, 8km from the Russians.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone wants to be a drone pilot now,\u201d says a soldier whose call sign is Viking. \u201cIt\u2019s better than assaulting, but it\u2019s not safer, because drone pilots are the Russians\u2019 number one target.\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 70 per cent of casualties on both sides are caused by exploding FPV (First Person View) \u201csuicide drones\u201d such as the one that wounded Scooter last week. Rotations are the most dangerous time.<\/p>\n

Soldiers from the Hellish Hornets and other units in the 54th Mechanised Brigade come and go over the course of several hours. \u201cYou out of the hospital already?\u201d one asked when Scooter walked in. They laugh at his call sign, because the Ukrainian word means something like \u201cself-propelled board\u201d. Scooter earned his nickname by crashing a home-made scooter.<\/p>\n

Several drone pilots were wounded by the exploding drone last week. At platoon headquarters, Lieut Yulia Mykytenko alerted the company medic who decided that the two most badly wounded should be evacuated immediately to Kharkiv. <\/p>\n

I have known Lieut Mykytenko for two years. She and I wrote a series of articles together<\/a> for The Irish Times, but this is the first time I have met the men she calls \u201cmy boys\u201d.<\/p>\n

Scooter stayed behind with the walking wounded. \u201cWhen you are attacked, you get such a rush of adrenalin that you may not know you are wounded,\u201d he explains. It is possible to bleed to death, for example from a femoral artery, if you don\u2019t realise you\u2019re wounded. He and a comrade undressed and inspected each other\u2019s bodies. The men laugh uproariously. Laughter, their company commander tells me later, is the best antidote to stress.<\/p>\n

\"DroneDrone pilots on a base in Donetsk, Denver, Graf, Symirochka aka Lieut Yulia Mykytenko, Kryepkyi and Tyson. Photograph: Lara Marlowe <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was another drone explosion near us, so we waited underground for a couple of hours,\u201d Scooter continues. \u201cThey sent a second Humvee for us. The Humvees are slower than a pickup, but at least they are armoured.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t noticed Lieut Mykytenko enthroned on a black vinyl car seat in the middle of the large, cluttered room. \u201cScooter is being modest,\u201d she interrupts. \u201cHe stayed with the wounded on the battlefield when he didn\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scooter served in an infantry assault group before joining the Hellish Hornets. \u201cThe longer you fight, the scarier it gets,\u201d he says. \u201cI lost two close comrades in the assault unit. Dima was killed in a Wagner attack in 2023. Foma was hit by a mortar when he was assaulting in 2024. We feel very sad, but we have to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

For how long? I ask Scooter. I hear Mykytenko\u2019s voice in the background: \u201cThe president says \u2018until victory\u2019.\u201d The men burst into laughter again.<\/p>\n

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s independence day speech on the Maidan in Kyiv on Sunday rang true: \u201cWe hear from the enemy every day: \u2018There is no such state, there is no such nation.\u2019 And every day, we prove the opposite. We prove that Ukrainians exist. Ukrainians will remain on this land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polyak (Polish) worked as a labourer in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland until the full-scale invasion in February 2022. He was given his call sign because he arrived from Poland to join the army. \u201cI fly Mavic drones to find fa**ots, and I find a lot of them,\u201d he says. \u201cI report to other units, and they decide what (kind of explosives) to send to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFa**ots\u201d is one of the soldiers\u2019 favourite epithets for Russians. \u201cFR\u201d for \u201ceffing Russians\u201d is another. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Irish Times view on the war in Ukraine: for all his bluster, Putin is losingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Polyak and his comrades know it is Independence Day weekend. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to celebrate it,\u201d he says plaintively. \u201cMaybe when the war is over. This is a surreal situation. Slaves came to conquer a free people and called it liberation.\u201d <\/p>\n

Polyak admits to \u201ca kind of burnout\u201d from the repetitive, seemingly endless war. He is 36 years old. \u201cI see my health depleting. My spine is suffering. I have hernias.\u201d <\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s failed promise to impose sanctions on Russia this summer raised some hopes, but not among the Hellish Hornets. \u201cIt\u2019s strange to see two old farts decide the fate of a young nation,\u201d Polyak says, referring to the August 15th Trump-Putin summit. \u201cAnd [Trump] wants a Nobel Prize? Putin wants to be \u2018the unifier of Russian lands\u2019? Putin\u2019s been in power for 25 years. I think he got bored. He built a war machine, and he wants to play with it like a toy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A loud explosion shakes the house. \u201cIt\u2019s probably a glide bomb, several kilometres away,\u201d says Viking. A second explosion, louder and closer. The Russians wait a few minutes to allow rescue teams to arrive, then bomb again to kill a maximum number of people, the soldiers explain. Perhaps 10 minutes later we hear a half dozen explosions in rapid succession. \u201cIt\u2019s probably Kramatorsk,\u201d Viking says. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a cluster bomb,\u201d says a heavyset soldier whose call sign is Radio. \u201cThere\u2019s a big explosion and then it sounds like marbles hitting the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PlatoonPlatoon commander Lt Yulia Mykytenko at the unit’s \u201chall of fame\u201d wall for the longest-surviving drones. Photograph: Lara Marlowe <\/p>\n

Polyak tells me about Kasper, one of a dozen men from the same company who were killed in a Russian tank assault on the village of Spirne in 2022. \u201cI miss him as a comrade. He\u2019s dead. What\u2019s there to weep about? I have seen so much death that I\u2019m used to death. Over time you become numb.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company commander, known as Tyson, arrives with a few more soldiers. The Hellish Hornets are one of six platoons, about 120 men, under the 25-year-old captain\u2019s orders. Tyson decided to join the army at age 14, when the Russians invaded his native Luhansk. His mother and sister escaped when the Russians took their village in 2022, but his grandmother stayed. The FSB (intelligence service) have visited his granny. Tyson does not contact her, for fear of putting her in danger.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Frustrated Trump threatens Russia sanctions if no progress on Ukraine peace dealOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Seven years in the army have given Tyson a sixth sense, he says. What, I ask, is his premonition? \u201cIt\u2019s not positive regarding the situation.\u201d Media reports say Russian forces are inching forward in Donetsk, albeit while taking huge losses. \u201cThey haven\u2019t captured as much land as western media say, but more than Ukrainian media report,\u201d he says. Manpower is the greatest problem, since Russia has a population three to four times that of Ukraine. Tyson complains that Russia \u201cimpoverishes its people\u201d to pay huge recruitment bonuses.<\/p>\n

Like the soldiers under his command, Tyson rejects Putin\u2019s demand \u2013 which Donald Trump appears to agree with \u2013 that Russia be awarded all of Donbas, including the quarter of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands, which Tyson\u2019s men have sacrificed so much to hold on to. \u201cWe need to keep the part of Donbas we still hold for as long as we can,\u201d Tyson says. \u201cIf we give it up now, we will be in terrible trouble, because this part of Donetsk is hilly, with villages. It has been a fortress line since 2014. If we give it up, the Russians will have an open gate to the rest of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyson\u2019s worst day occurred at a place called Olhynka in the spring of 2022, when his best friend, the man he had asked to be the godfather of his first child, was shot in a skirmish and later died of his wounds. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to rescue him. If you know someone who is wounded but you may be killed, you are not supposed to rescue them. I was young and I tried to save him. I was shot in the left hip. The doctor said I would never walk again. I still walk with a limp, and I still feel pain. They would give me a prosthetic hip, but I cannot afford to take six months off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyson\u2019s happiest day occurred this year when his company extracted a unit from a besieged village after months of fighting. \u201cThe Russians took the village later, but we saved our men,\u201d he says. \u201cOur number one priority is saving our men. That\u2019s the difference: they don\u2019t care at all. I think they lost a whole brigade, several thousand killed and wounded, to take that village.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ukraine fights not only for itself, Tyson concludes. \u201cWe are fighting as our ancestors did in the Middle Ages, but this time it is the Russians who are the Mongol horde. We are doing everything we can to ensure that you Europeans see war only on your television screens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The drone pilots had almost reached their position under cover of darkness when they heard the buzzing sound…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,2264,2263,2267,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-22093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-ukraine-crisis","21":"tag-vladimir-putin","22":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}