Ukrainian drone operator Dimko Zhluktenko and his teammates flying a fixed-wing reconnaissance drone in Donetsk Oblast in August 2025. (Francis Farrell / The Kyiv Independent)
Editor’s note: To mark the fourth birthday of the Kyiv Independent, the War Notes newsletter team decided to pass one edition of the newsletter to a special guest writer, who could capture the time and place we are at in Russia’s war against Ukraine from a new perspective. You can subscribe to War Notes and the Kyiv Independent’s other newsletters here.
About the author: Dimko Zhluktenko is a drone operator in Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and co-founder of military aid volunteer organization Dzyga’s Paw.
Somewhere in the muddy fields of Donetsk Oblast, our combat Volkswagen van crawls forward like an old beast fighting for every meter.
It’s been raining for almost three weeks now, and the fog hangs so thick that sometimes you start to feel as if you’re floating in some kind of weightless void, outside of space and time — caught inside this endless “fog of war.”
At one point, I even start thinking we’ll need to call our pickup truck to winch us out, but my driver, callsign Axe, short and nimble, 35 years old from Kyiv, shifts into a lower gear, curses under his breath, and somehow the engine growls until we are free. The nights are long now, and the days begin around seven, only to fade into darkness by four in the afternoon.
There is so much darkness.
Life on the battlefield carries its own strange rhythm. Pokrovsk has been holding its defensive lines for over a year — a fragile steadying point in a war that rarely gives you anything steady. About a year ago, I was meeting my friends there, freely drinking coffee and joking about when this city would become unlivable, discussing where there were nice underground bunkers in the city to defend it from.
But the real pressure, the real threat, lies further south near Zaporizhzhia, where the Russians continue to push, wave after wave, trying to crack open our defenses.
Ukrainian drone operator Dimko Zhluktenko and his teammates flying a fixed-wing reconnaissance drone in Donetsk Oblast in August 2025. (Francis Farrell / The Kyiv Independent)
The biggest issue still is the small Russian infantry groups infiltrating the area. It’s simple math — if 50 Russian soldiers on foot don’t break the defenses, Russian commanders send 100 of them. And they will keep going, despite knowing the casualty rate is extremely high.
Back in our so-called “rest and relax” cities, there is very little rest to be had these days. A few days ago, as I was driving back from a mission, Russian Shahed drones hit the very village where our unit usually recovers between tasks.
They struck the local power substation — two direct hits — and the explosions were enormous, sending arcs of electricity sparking into the night. I saw it with my own eyes from maybe 500 meters (about 0,3 miles) away. For a moment, I stood there debating whether to run toward the flames and help with the firefighting, but instinct — the soldier’s safety fuse — kicked in: Russians almost always hit the same target again to kill rescuers and first responders.
As I hesitated, people from the village came out onto the street, trying to understand what had just happened. One woman, maybe a 50-year-old, began to cry softly, saying her son was working there that night. She kept trying to call him, hands shaking. There was no signal.
I remembered the words of my brother-in-arms, Axe: “Russia’s war is like 9/11 — but every single day. And the terrorists have the means to do it to us endlessly.” His wife and kids live in Kyiv, and he is always worried about them. In the first ten months of 2025 alone, Russia launched over 44,000 attack drones at Ukraine.
The whole world seems to be discussing Trump’s “peace plan,” including negotiations, frameworks, and diplomatic off-ramps.
I don’t get any of that.
It feels so detached for us when we drive through Donbas mud as swarms of Russian first-person-view (FPV) drones prowl above us, hunting for any heat signature that moves. We coordinate with operations officers at the command point, watch our situational awareness screens, wait for approval, then Oskar Mike (military slang for “on the move”). We just keep going, every day. For us — for the people of Ukraine — peace doesn’t start with signatures. It starts with refusing to give our sacrifices and leaving our fallen brothers-in-arms in vain. We fight for our Independence, our Freedom, and our right to be Ukrainians.
Ukrainian drone operator Dimko Zhluktenko and his teammates flying a fixed-wing reconnaissance drone in Donetsk Oblast in August 2025. (Francis Farrell / The Kyiv Independent)
In my unit, I have two girls, barely 20 years old — one of them just enlisted. It breaks my heart to see them here, even though I am proud of their bravery. They are capable drone pilots, sharp, disciplined, smart. They remind me every day of what we’re fighting for — the chance for their generation to live in a Ukraine where war is a memory, not a destiny.
I thought about you — the readers of the Kyiv Independent from all over the world — during this exfil as our van broke free from the mud at the end of the mission when we drove onto Kramatorsk road. This letter is our connection.
The people with me on these missions are ordinary people, just like you. I hope that this fog, this damp, weightless detachment, will one day disappear. I hope the moisture lifts, the sun comes back with its harsh, unforgiving brightness, and the next time I write, it will not be from a place where we complain about the weather, dust, mice, and about how the Russians are pushing again.
I hope that we can hold them off. Дякую, що ви з нами.
Dimko Zhluktenko, callsign Liber.
You can follow Dimko on X here and donate to his organization, Dzyga’s Paw, which works 24/7 to meet the everyday needs of Ukrainian units across the Armed Forces.
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.
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