{"id":30254,"date":"2026-08-19T06:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T06:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/30254\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T06:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T06:39:17","slug":"elite-ukrainian-drone-unit-brings-the-war-to-moscows-doorstep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/30254\/","title":{"rendered":"Elite Ukrainian drone unit brings the war to Moscow’s doorstep"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waves of Ukrainian drones targeted the massive logistics center outside Moscow<\/a> overnight. The next morning, it was still ablaze, dark smoke rising into the sky from what was one of Russia\u2019s largest retail warehouses<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of miles away, Ukrainian drone crews had barely paused after the night\u2019s work before starting to prepare for another attack. <\/p>\n

A small group of soldiers quickly assembled in a sunflower field in southern Ukraine, gathering around 20 small planelike drones laden with explosives, before launching them toward Russia. <\/p>\n

The launch by the Ukrainian 413th \u201cRaid\u201d Unmanned Systems Regiment on Sunday morning was observed by a team of Associated Press journalists \u2014 a rare glimpse into a rapidly expanding part of Ukraine\u2019s war effort<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Ukraine\u2019s latest tactic \u2014 long-range drones designed to carry the war deep inside Russia, striking military, industrial and logistical sites far from the front line.<\/p>\n

Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots<\/a>, burning billions of dollars\u2019 worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant.<\/p>\n

Those attacks have brought the war home to the Russian public, nearly 4\u00bd years into Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a>. The scale of the attacks has also forced Russia\u2019s military to stretch air defenses over a larger area, disrupted airports, sparked fuel shortages and undermined morale<\/a> in Russia.<\/p>\n

The regiment\u2019s commander, Yevhen Karas, said his unit had also taken part hours earlier in the strike on the Wildberries warehouse<\/a>, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Moscow, during one of Ukraine\u2019s largest attacks on Russia to date<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ukraine will need to punish the Kremlin \u201cif we want to get a stable and long period of peace, and normal peace,\u201d Karas said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger casualties they have,\u201d the sooner they will go for peace, he added.<\/p>\n

Kyiv officials aim to make the Russian public feel the war\u2019s consequences<\/a> and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no sign he intends to end the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Karas, however, believes the impact of Ukraine\u2019s long-range strike campaign on Russia\u2019s economy is bringing home the cost of the war to ordinary Russians and hopes this will drive Moscow back to the negotiating table after months of U.S.-brokered talks between the two sides stalled. <\/p>\n

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On Sunday morning, before the drones took to the skies, Karas took out a black marker and wrote a message on the fuselage: \u201cMoscow burns under the sky, red flame rises so warm and high, dark smoke moves above the town, fire lights the night all around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the majority of Ukraine\u2019s serving military, Karas had a very different life before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.<\/p>\n

But on that day, the 38-year-old who majored in philosophy in his university studies and his brother Volodymyr both volunteered for the front. His brother was killed while defending the Kyiv region. In the months that followed, Karas rose through the ranks to become an officer in Ukraine\u2019s Special Operations Forces. <\/p>\n

In 2024, Karas was appointed commander of the newly-formed 413th Raid Unmanned Systems Regiment, which began as a unit using drones for reconnaissance and other battlefield tasks. <\/p>\n

As drone technology developed and flight range increased from hundreds to over a thousand miles, his unit was tasked with mounting long-range operations using Ukraine\u2019s domestically produced FP-1 drones against targets deep inside Russia.<\/p>\n

Others in the unit include a former opera singer, a computer programmer, a rapper and a cellist. Their routine now focuses on a very simple sequence of tasks: prepare the drone, check the systems, move it into position and launch. <\/p>\n

Wait for the result, then repeat. <\/p>\n

The unit\u2019s medallion \u2014 something militaries across the world refer to as a \u201cchallenge coin\u201d \u2014 carries the troops\u2019 insignia on one side, a stylized, three-prong arrow. On the other is a relief depiction of a Kremlin in flames, with a drone flying over it.<\/p>\n

Karas said that in this phase of the war, Moscow should fear the skies. <\/p>\n

\u201cMuscovites should spend their nights in their wonderful metro, just as residents of Kyiv have spent years going underground to escape Russian missile and drone attacks,\u201d Karas said. <\/p>\n

Back in the sunflower field, once the drones were airborne, the soldiers packed up their equipment and drove away, leaving hardly any traces of their activity. <\/p>\n

They were on to the next launch site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waves of Ukrainian drones targeted the massive logistics center outside Moscow overnight. The next morning, it was still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[204,528,153,166,154,158,160,364,38,25,157,6,269,26,164,33,161,81],"class_list":["post-30254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-ap-top-news","tag-associated-press","tag-drone-surveillance-and-warfare","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-kyiv","tag-military-and-defense","tag-military-technology","tag-moscow","tag-russia","tag-russia-government","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-technology","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-government","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}