The deadly drone war being waged from below ground

Sam Kiley joins Ukrainian infantry for a night of lethal attacks against an enemy just a few kilometres away

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Ramzan darts about his garage workshop with gleeful enthusiasm, showing off a small blue mortar bomb - a whopping, thin-tailed, bulging-headed shell from America, bespoke Ukrainian high-explosive grenades and even an antitank mine - all for dropping on the heads of Russians.

A former infantry soldier, he has been at war for three years and says he misses the thrill of fighting up close, but, as the armourer for a four-man drone team flying an unmanned bomber in the National Guard’s Typhoon drone unit, he adds: “This is the best way to kill Russians.”

In a war of constant frontline improvisation, workshops like Ramzan’s garage - where he makes his own detonators and devises new types of incendiary bombs - have taken on the value of billion-pound industrial-military research centres in Nato countries.

Drone war was pioneered by self-funded Ukrainian soldiers adapting civilian toys to mortal effect. Kyiv now has the capacity to produce drones by the million, but on the front lines the model remains a killer startup.

Ramzan’s crew, Team Grey, is led by an older former infantry officer, whom we are not naming, who has been at war for 10 years and has family living under Russian occupation in the Donbas. He is waiting in a bunker not far away but within range of the enemy in Kamyanske, south of Zaporizhzhia.

Russia’s army has tried to punch through Ukrainian lines here over the last three weeks. It has used armoured attacks but been stalled by Ukrainian drones and infantry - and is taking and losing ground at a staggering and bloody cost.