Aerorozvidka Project: The civilian battalion that develops drones for the Ukrainian army | International

Vadim was a Protestant priest at some point in his original life. He now gets excited when he talks about those little gadgets with which they hunt down Russian soldiers. From a cafe on the banks of the Dnieper River, in kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, he shows with wide eyes and a smile of some pride images recorded by a drone at the moment in which it drops several projectiles on a target in the front of war in Ukraine. “These bombs can cost from 30 to 100 dollars, while the missiles of the American launchers Himars, about 50,000″. Or more. A conscious exaggeration to show the usefulness of what he does. Vadim, 47, who prefers not to reveal his last name ―“we are monitored by Russian special services,” he explains―, is the chief engineer of Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance), a project launched eight years ago by civilians to cooperate with the army with what they had, especially technical knowledge, in the fight against Russia. “This is how we combat the idea that only the big ones win wars,” says Vadim. His work in the counteroffensive to stop a mile-long Russian convoy that was approaching kyiv from the north in March will forever be on the record of Aerorozvidka’s drones.

This idea of ​​David against Goliath that surrounds the invasion of the neighbor ordered by Russia on February 24 translates in Ukraine into a special intervention of civil society in support of its soldiers. According to successive surveys published in recent months, around 80% of Ukrainian citizens say they have donated to the army ―only 33% of Russians would be willing to do so, according to a study recently published by the daily Kommersant―. The collaboration of the people is requested in the streets, in marquees and advertisements; he is encouraged to enlist in the ranks to fight Moscow. Volunteers have arrived from outside the country to take up arms, but there were already those within the territory that since the rebellion of the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas (east) in 2014 have wanted to cooperate without having to touch the trench. There is Aerorozvidka, but there are others, such as the Arey engineering group, which has been designing military vehicles, especially tanks, for the Armed Forces since April 2015.

“In the beginning”, recalls Vadim, “many soldiers did not understand what we were doing, they called us nerds [calificativo peyorativo para estudiosos de pocas habilidades sociales] with weapons because we fought with technical things.” But in that group of volunteers there was everything. They joined the heat of the protests that broke out in Independence Square, Euromaidan, at the end of 2013 against the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych. A few months later, Russia spurred the rise of separatist forces in Donbas, the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine, still the main battlefront today. Vadim says that they began to collaborate with the army through their reconnaissance drones, still without the ability to drop bombs, in the 2014 offensive on Mariupol. The city managed to remain on the Ukrainian side on that occasion.

Aerorozvidka was launched hand in hand with the Ukrainian-Israeli soldier Natan Chazin and the banking investor Volodímir Kochetkov-Sukach, alias Chewbacca (referring to the character of StarWars). First they started with cheap drones to which they attached a GoPro camera to see from the sky what the Ukrainian army could not see. Then they bought more sophisticated, professional equipment for military use. And finally they have created their own, like the R18 octocopter, their crown jewel. From their drones they can transport projectiles and attack targets. Some of these bombs are also prepared by them: they are modifications of hand grenades of Soviet origin that their small planes can now use.

But the project was not without risk. In March 2015, Chewbacca was killed while trying to retrieve a lost drone. He went a couple of kilometers into the area of ​​Donetsk province occupied by Russian forces and fell into a mine. He was their leader. “Chewbacca was a very charismatic person,” says Vadim, “no one is capable of taking that place now, so we made decisions by consensus.” Aerorozvidka has a hundred permanent employees, but, according to the accounts of its chief engineer, thousands of collaborators. Among them would be all those who finance their existence. “I have a group of computer scientists who are paid by a company, for example, and another person has donated the warehouse where they work.”

Klaus Hentrich, a molecular biologist from Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, is one of those necessary collaborators of this initiative, together with the Ukrainian economist Marina Borozna. “What we do,” Hentrich, with experience in the German army, explains to EL PAÍS, “is organizing donations of money and drones. We ship 20,000 pound commercial drones [23.600 euros] to Aerorozvidka from the UK”. Through its website and social networks, this project organizes a kind of crowdfunding to finance his inventions and work in collaboration with the army.

This cooperation between those nerds of Aerorozvidka and the Ukrainian military has not been regular. A few years after they began to show them the enemy’s positions, which forged an official collaboration, the Ministry of Defense removed them from the military establishment. Things changed last February. They were called on the 23rd, a few hours before the Russian troops launched the offensive, and on the 24th they were already meeting with members of the army to see how they could help. And so much so that they did. Aerorozvidka’s drones were essential for Ukrainian special forces to make a surprise attack on a Russian convoy tens of kilometers long that was advancing towards kyiv from Belarus in March. Their devices also made it possible to locate the paratroopers sent by Moscow over the Gostomel airport.

And they continue to work, with drones, but also through a network of cameras on the front linked to an internet network that allows any movement to be shown in real time. These devices send data to Ukrainian units on the ground through the Starlink satellite system, owned by Elon Musk, according to information from Aerorozvidka. Indeed, Musk declared in March that his satellites were operational for use in Ukraine.

Again, now the relationship between Aerorozvidka and the Ukrainian army is official. So much so that engineer Vadim is already a sergeant. “Winning this war will be a victory”, continues the former priest, “then we will have to create a security system so that no one attacks us”. Where was religion? “I pray him every day. There are many examples in the Bible of using the wisdom that is given to you.”

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