Small Russian infiltration teams are exploiting bad weather to sneak past Ukrainian lines and cause major problems for Kyiv’s forces, a senior defense official told Business Insider.
Lt. Col. Yurii Myronenko, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defense for innovation, said that drones are responsible for strikes on roughly 90% of all targets struck on the battlefield and have made large-scale armor assaults extremely challenging.
But drones alone are not enough to hold the line and stop the enemy from breaking through, he said. Dense fog and other inclement weather provide ideal cover for Russian infiltration tactics.
“Infiltration by small groups, sometimes just one person with a rifle and grenades, whose task is to hide in a basement or dugout, is difficult to counter,” the former drone unit commander said.
While drones have provided front-line units with constant battlefield surveillance in Ukraine, they are constrained by limited visibility in bad weather, which appears to have presented Russian forces with an opportunity.
Ukrainian soldiers have described the infiltration tactics to Business Insider as a growing problem that is happening more often now than it was earlier in the war, especially in the eastern regions.
Russia’s infiltration teams often consist of just a few soldiers who are sent on a range of missions, including seizing key positions and holding them until reinforcements arrive, disrupting Ukraine’s drone operations, and planting mines near troops’ locations.
The Ukrainian soldiers said that once the Russian infiltrators slip past the defensive lines, they start stirring up trouble, forcing Kyiv to divert much-needed troops from other areas to deal with the incursion. These are high-risk missions for Russia, and many soldiers have been killed executing them.
Even with good weather, the front line stretches some 800 miles across Ukraine. Drones can’t monitor every single inch of the sprawling battlefield, and Kyiv is also facing a serious manpower crisis — factors that create space for surprise infiltrations.
Russia’s defense ministry and its US embassy did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on these tactics.
Earlier this month, Russian forces used bad weather as cover to push deeper into Pokrovsk, a war-torn city in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region that has become the site of some of the conflict’s most intense fighting.
Thick fog allowed Russian soldiers to advance on foot, by motorbike, and in cars, shielding them from Ukrainian drones and cameras that struggled to operate in the low visibility.
Meanwhile, despite the limits of drone tech in bad weather, Myronenko said uncrewed systems continue to expand the “gray zone” between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian soldiers previously described the gray zone to Business Insider as an area of the front line where there is no true line of contact and key positions on both sides have been moved back beyond the reach of shorter-range drones.
“Autonomous drones can make the kill zone large enough for the situation to resemble World War I, when the Western front remained static for years due to the lack of breakthrough technological superiority on either side,” Myronenko said.
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