Illustrative image.
Ukrainian military analyst Dmytro Putiata said on August 21 that Russian forces are launching 1,500 to 2,000 radio-controlled first-person-view (FPV) drones every 24 hours against the city of Druzhkivka and two key logistics routes into it in the Donetsk region.
Putiata, posting on X, added that the figures exclude fiber-optic-guided FPV drone strikes, which are “impossible to count.”
Ukraine’s 19th Army Corps is currently facing heavy pressure in Druzhkivka and nearby areas, according to the military analyst.
In the nearby city of Dobropillia, also within Donetsk, Russian forces are launching about 1,200 radio-controlled FPV drones daily, Putiata added.
“The amount of drones and drone operators are constantly increasing,” he wrote.
Radio-controlled FPV drones are cheap and easy to manufacture, and over the past year Russian military developers have made them more resistant to jamming, employing solutions like mesh networking, cellular control, frequency hopping, custom frequency bands, dynamic software-defined radio channel swapping, and boosted transmission power.
Druzhkivka and Dobropillia lie northeast and north of the former Pokrovsk front. After capturing Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, Russian forces shifted in these directions, using small infiltration groups, infantry units, and reinforced brigades to close in on both cities.
In recent weeks, the Russian military advanced to within roughly six kilometers of Druzhkivka in places, reached the southeastern outskirts of Dobropillia with infiltration groups, and seized or contested settlements such as Matiasheve and areas near Bilytske and Hannivka.
Russian troops also expanded fire control over key roads with drones and glide bombs, complicating the logistics of Kyiv forces.
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