On the menu today: A visit to two more secret Ukrainian drone production facilities and some almost-adorable “drone dogs”; why, despite U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s assertion, the Istanbul Protocol Agreement is not a useful guidepost for peace talks; and some cold hard numbers — or at least cold hard estimates — on how Russia is experiencing roughly one Vietnam War’s worth of killed in action each year during its invasion of Ukraine.
Touring a Drone Factory
Somewhere in Ukraine — I’m in a location that feels like it’s straight out of a Mission: Impossible movie. A mundane storefront on a Ukrainian city street hides a combat drone production company behind its walls.
For obvious reasons, I can’t say where this drone production company is — they don’t want me to even mention the region, and they’ve asked me not to print the company’s name, even though they’re allowing me to take a few pictures of their products. (While asking for this secrecy, they also gave me a big stack of promotional materials, and I wonder if they want me to hand them out in the Pentagon parking lot or something.)
I asked our guide what he wanted to be called, and he said, “Friendly Elf.” One of the derisive nicknames for the Russian forces is “Orcs,” so it’s not surprising that the Ukrainians see themselves as the benevolent and noble creatures of mythology.
This is my second trip to a secret drone production facility in this country, as I was able to return to the facility I visited last year. I’ll refer to them as Drone Facility One and Drone Facility Two.
Drone Facility Two is smaller, but a Ukrainian worker was soldering electronic equipment on a table behind us as Friendly Elf showcased his company’s products. (I sometimes see comments from those in the U.S., arguing that not enough Ukrainian men are serving in the nearly million-man armed forces of this country. It’s easy to forget that Ukraine has its own rapidly growing domestic arms production industry, employing 300,000 workers by the end of 2023; those are the last released numbers, and I’ll bet it’s higher — perhaps significantly higher now. About one-third of all weapons in Ukraine today are domestically produced, and there’s need for skilled workers in all those jobs. Just because a Ukrainian man isn’t wearing a uniform doesn’t mean he isn’t involved in the war effort.)
Friendly Elf’s company makes a wide variety of drones. The aerial ones have interceptor and strike variants and can be used as decoys alongside cruise missiles. About four and a half feet, sleek, and equipped with about two and a half kilograms of explosives.
Friendly Elf shows me a video of one of his company’s drones coming in behind an Iranian-built, Russian-deployed Shaheed drone, steadily closing in, and then destroying it upon impact.
The ground drones at Drone Facility Two are equipped with an arm that can lift 50 kilograms (about 110 pounds) and retrieve the wounded soldiers or the bodies of those slain, carry cargo, or deploy up to eight landmines at a time. The ground drones are also sometimes deployed to dangerous locations to retrieve downed Russian aerial drones.
The drone war is a constant game of cat-and-mouse electronic warfare, with one side developing a new method of jamming signals and then the other side developing countermeasures, so Ukrainian engineers are always happy to get a good look at the inner electronics of an intact Russian drone.
I keep hearing about how Ukraine must accept an unjust peace deal now, because they’re outmanned and outgunned. But they’ve been outmanned and outgunned since the start of the war. The biggest reason that the Ukrainians have fought to a stalemate, outside of an iron-willed refusal to quit, is that they’re more innovative and technologically advanced than their enemies.
I got a second tour of Drone Facility One from a Ukrainian who asked to be called Nelson; this facility specializes in ground drones, and once again it was like Tony Stark’s dream workshop, with the air heavy with the pungent smell of soldering and sparks from welding.
A mine-laying drone with a roll bar:
A recent report by the U.K’s Royal United Services Institute concluded, “Tactical UAVs currently account for 60 to 70 percent of damaged and destroyed Russian systems.” They cautioned, that figure “must be read in the appropriate context. During extended discussions with Ukrainian officers on multiple axes and from multiple brigades — two of which had an exceptionally high rates of efficiency with FPVs — the officers repeatedly reiterated that they needed artillery. They emphasized that UAVs alone were inadequate and that they were most effective when used in combination with artillery.” But it is not overstating it to say that drones are what’s keeping Ukraine in the war; “All Ukrainian formations field a mix of attack UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), ranging from light and heavy bomber drones to FPVs (first person view drones).”
In fact, late last year, the Ukrainian drones won a battle against the Russians . . . with no humans alongside them. In the first week of December, near Lyptsi, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, the Ukrainians launched an all-drone assault on a Russian position. The Ukraine-based Counteroffensive news site reported, “Dozens of FPV, recon, turret-mounted, and kamikaze drones all working in tandem on the ground and in the air. . . . No drone swarm technology was used, which meant that each individual drone was piloted by an individual pilot.”
I asked Nelson if this facility’s drones were involved in that battle, and he said, “Some of our dogs were involved.” At first, I thought this was a translation issue, but a few moments later, a four-legged dog-like remote-control drone walked up to us:
The dog-like drones are used for scouting and surveillance; this one can move eerily fast either forwards or backwards, walk sideways, jump, and even do a back flip. Nelson and the other engineers said they’re thinking of making the dog drones bigger and more menacing to intimidate enemy soldiers — and also dreaming of making drones for the civilian market when the war ends.
(The Pentagon is developing its own “dog drones” for scouting and security.)
Among Ukrainian engineers, the questions are always, “Is there a way we can manufacture this cheaper? Faster? More durable?”
Both drone companies also make small portable devices that disrupt signals to enemy drones. (We were under an air-raid alert during our conversation at Drone Facility Two, so I hoped one was in use near us. As one of my friends joked when the air-raid alert began, “We’ll be perfectly safe from Russian airstrikes, because we’re in a legitimate military target.”)
This Isn’t a Peace Deal, This Is a Surrender Demand
This past weekend during an appearance on CNN, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff made an absolutely absurd assertion: “There were very, very what I will call cogent and substantive negotiations [in 2022] framed in something that’s called the Istanbul Protocol Agreement. We came very, very close to signing something. And I think we will be using that framework as a guidepost to get a peace deal done between Ukraine and Russia. And I think that will be an amazing day.”
The Russian offer on the table in the Istanbul Protocol Agreement was a demand for Ukrainian capitulation, an ultimatum requiring Kyiv minimize the size of its armed forces in exchange for a promise from Vladimir Putin that he wouldn’t invade again. Only a suicidal country would agree to those terms.
The Istanbul proposal was a de facto Ukrainian surrender:
The draft treaties reportedly banned Ukraine from receiving any foreign weapons or hosting any foreign military personnel. The WSJ and NYT reported that Russia pushed for the Ukrainian military to be limited to 85,000 soldiers, 342 tanks, and 519 artillery systems. Russia also reportedly demanded that Ukrainian missiles be limited to a range of 40 kilometers (25 miles), a range that would allow Russian forces to deploy critical systems and materiel close to Ukraine without fear of strikes.
Ukraine currently has close to a million-man military, so this would cut the size of the Ukrainian military by more than 91 percent.
I keep noticing that people who are outside of Ukraine, and who could arguably be considered de facto supporters of Russia, seem much more eager for a cease-fire than the actual Ukrainians I’m here and talking with. Ukrainians are no doubt exhausted from the war effort and its myriad forms of attendant suffering, and hate the fact that they have to fight this war. But they hate what the Russians are doing to them so much more! The “just” part of “a just peace” is nonnegotiable. And that’s not some Zelensky or military spokesman warmongering, that’s the overwhelming mindset of the Ukrainians who live with air-raid alerts that come more frequently than those “we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty” calls.
Why are there so many loud Americans who are so much more insistent that the war end than the Ukrainians who are actually fighting the war?
The Russians are supposedly so indomitable, but they’re resorting to using North Korean troops and donkeys to move equipment. Allegedly, North Korea is now providing 50 percent of Russia’s ammunition. The Russian economy is supposedly so unstoppable, but interest rates are around 20 percent. The combined GDP of Russia, Iran, and North Korea amounts to less money than that of United Kingdom and barely above Canada, never mind the United States or the European Union.
I keep hearing that Putin’s winning the war. “Is he though?” As discussed on X, during 2024, Russian forces captured an estimated 1,609 square miles in Ukraine and Russia’s Kursk Oblast, where Ukraine had previously launched a cross-border offensive. That’s roughly the size of Rhode Island, or two-thirds the size of Delaware.
According to the United Kingdom’s Military Intelligence, during that year, Russia suffered a combined 429,660 killed and wounded in action — and as the year ended, the rate of Russian casualties were accelerating: “December 2024 was likely the most costly month of the war for Russia with a total of 48,670 casualties reported by the Ukraine General Staff. In November 2024, 45,680 Russian troop losses were recorded. December marked the sixth consecutive month in which Russian forces suffered higher losses than the previous month.”
Russian forces are suffering mid-six-figure casualties in a year, in exchange for the land equivalent of the tiniest American states? And this is supposed to be a sign that Ukraine just can’t go on?
The BBC recently estimated that the true number of Russian military deaths could range from “146,194 to 211,169. If one adds estimated losses from Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic forces, the total number of Russian-aligned fatalities may range from 167,194 to 234,669.” Dissident Russian media outlets put the number at 160,000 to 165,000. The Ukrainians put the number of killed and wounded combined at 868,230 as of February 24, but they don’t break it down between killed and wounded.
For perspective, the United States suffered 58,220 in-theater deaths in Vietnam, which lasted 20 years but was particularly intense for eight or nine years.
So Russia’s experiencing just under a Vietnam War’s worth of killed in action each year . . . and Ukraine’s the one that has to give up and accept a cease-fire on Moscow’s terms?
ADDENDUM: One of the usual ninnies saw the picture of me in the plate carrier and helmet, somewhere in northeastern Ukraine, and accused me of “playing soldier.” If I were playing soldier, I’d be armed. This is standard equipment for journalists traveling through these areas. (That said, I really haven’t had any need for the armored vest or helmet in my travels so far, which is very much the way I wanted it! I was also told to remove the Velcro “MEDIA” label, because apparently the Russians interpret that sign as an instruction to “shoot this guy first.” At no point am I pretending to be a soldier, claiming to be a soldier, or wishing to be compared to a soldier, because those guys accept a hell of a lot more risk in their jobs than I do in mine. With that said, I am keenly aware that what I am doing entails some risks.)