How Fiber Optic Drones Are Transforming the War on Ukraine

Local activists evacuating civilians from the front line of the war on Ukraine face a long list of dangers: artillery shelling, land mines, rockets, drones, large and small, and even capture by Russian soldiers.

Most of these threats have been constant for some years. But small, fiber optic drones are transforming the war. Like the remote-controlled First Person View (FPV) drones they evolved from, they are cheap and mass produced; unlike those, they are unjammable, and virtually impossible to detect.

I’ve been helping evacuation efforts around Kharkiv for a few years, driving to the front line dozens of times with local volunteers to evacuate mostly elderly people from communities under fire. I’m only here every couple of months, but activists go virtually every day. The work is highly dangerous. Some of those I’ve worked alongside have been injured, others killed.

This week I was back with local activists to evacuate a woman from her front line village of Velykyi Burluk. As we drove to meet her, we watched the hand-held drone detectors that show activity overhead. When they sense something, they beep and a small screen displays the level of danger. But these only work against drones controlled by radio waves; they cannot pick up signals from those attached to an operator by a fiber-optic line.

First used a couple of years ago, they have become increasingly sophisticated. Their range is increasing dramatically, from a few miles in 2024 to at least 20 miles now. The fiber is thinner than fishing line, and it spools out from its operator on the Russian side, as the drone hunts for a target.

Many of those hit are civilians. UN officials reported that civilian casualties in Ukraine in May were the highest in over four years, including at least 64 civilian deaths and 539 injuries from short-range drone strikes, the highest monthly toll for those weapons since Russia's full-scale invasion of February 2022.

The Ukrainian military uses them too, and more recently they have been deployed in wars in Israel and Sudan. Once seen as a futuristic weapon, they are now cheap and lethal.

The evacuation activists rightly fear them. While previously the drones’ cameras were limited by clouds or darkness, their vision is now much better, and darkness no longer offers us any cloak of safety.

“It doesn’t matter what the weather is now, the drones are so much more powerful than they were six or twelve months ago," said Sasha Humaniuk, who heads Roza na Ruke, a local evacuation team in Kharkiv. “The only thing that still makes it hard for an operator to control them is a very strong wind.”

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022, there have been ready comparisons with the First World War. Like in that conflict, there have been massive casualties, with much of the fighting done in bitter cold from trenches along an 800-mile front line. The First World War lasted 1,568 days, a grim milestone passed earlier this month since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But drones have now made this war unlike that one. And here, there was no Christmas truce. On Christmas morning in 2025, activist Vyacheslav (Slava) Ilchenko was killed by a fiber optic drone while on his way to evacuate civilians. I had worked with him a few times to bring elderly people away from the front line. In the Nezlamna team, he worked closely with Julia Indyk. Between them they brought back hundreds, possibly thousands, of people from the front line.

Julia has carried on doing evacuations and knows the risks better than anyone. She wears protective armour and uses a drone detector but knows there is little defense against the kind of drone that killed Slava. This week, she headed the team going into Velykyi Burluk.

We visited Slava’s grave on his birthday, June 16. Evacuation activist Tigran Galustyan is buried five plots away; he was killed by a drone on his way to evacuate civilians in October 2024. We prayed at his grave, and at that of Yulia Keleberda, evacuation specialist and White Angels policewoman killed by a missile in February 2026, with her colleague Yvhenii Kalhan while doing the same work.

Friends and family gathered around Slava’s grave and told stories of his humour and his bravery, and lit a small birthday cake with a single candle. He would have been 43.