Ukraine's drone commander has Russian oil, troops and morale in his sights

Ukraine's drone commander has Russian oil, troops and morale in his sights3 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleSarah RainsfordSouthern and Eastern Europe correspondent , Eastern UkraineBBC joins drone team at secret location in Ukraine"We're like a red rag to the enemy. Because we're taking the war to their territory so that they feel it too," the Ukrainian soldier says, as his unit scramble to assemble long-range drones for launch at Russia.Ukraine has been intensifying its deep strikes like this for several weeks, targeting oil export facilities, in particular, like never before.Now, in a rare interview, the commander of all Ukraine's unmanned systems has told the BBC such attacks will escalate and claimed his drone forces are also holding back Russia's advance along the frontline by killing a record number of soldiers."1,500 to 2,000km (930-1,240 miles) inside Russian territory is no longer the 'peaceful rear'," Robert Brovdi warns. "The freedom-loving Ukrainian 'bird' flies there whenever and wherever it wants."At the secret launch site, a drizzly field in eastern Ukraine, the long-range drones are primed and we're ordered back to a safe distance. The team work quickly before Russian forces can detect them and send ballistic missiles hurtling towards us. There's a shouted command, loud revs of an engine and a flash of white as the first device tears into the sky towards Russia like a mini jet plane.President Volodymyr Zelensky calls such deep strikes "very painful" to Moscow, causing "critical" losses running to tens of billions of dollars in its energy sector despite the recent surge in global oil prices.The increase in such attacks is partly down to technology. Locally produced drones are becoming cheaper and flying further: the model we see launch can now travel more than 1,000km and others already go twice as far.But it's also about focus. In addition to military personnel and production, Russia's energy exports have been identified as a priority target.BBC/Moose CampbellUkraine has been intensifying its deep strikes into Russia in recent weeks. The BBC went to see one such drone launch in eastern Ukraine"Putin extracts natural resources and converts them into blood dollars that they then direct against us in the form of Shahed drones and ballistic missiles," says Commander Brovdi, justifying the strikes.Residents in Tuapse on Russia's Black Sea coast complain of toxic rain after a second wave of major strikes on the local refinery in several days. But Brovdi is dry-eyed."If oil refineries are a tool to make money that's used for war, then they are a legitimate military target, subject to destruction."The commander wages war in the skies from a secret location deep underground. We're taken to meet him in a van with blacked out windows, then led down stairs and along corridors lined with sleeping pods to emerge into a high-tech cavern covered in screens from floor to ceiling.The soundtrack is a series of bleeps and pings as fresh data is fed to dozens of men in T-shirts and hoodies hunched over joysticks and keyboards. They're monitoring images streamed directly from the battlefield from drone pilots with names like KitKat and Antalya.Brovdi's Unmanned Systems Forces make up just 2% of Ukraine's military but these days he says they account for a third of all targets destroyed. Their own casualty rate, he tells me, is no secret: less than 1% per year.Each strike – of any kind – is filmed for verification and logged, and…

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