Homage to Zaporizhia and Sumy

The drones are circling the city, terrorising its residents on this spring night in Zaporizhia. Some roar like light aircraft and some whine, according to their make. Their buzz decelerates as they turn. 

Russia’s drone attacks on civilians are exponentially increasing out of frustration

At their loudest, I walk into the hotel bathroom for shelter, but can’t resist returning to the window. Flashlights sparkle as Ukrainian forces seek to illuminate the drones, and gunfire sends up red hot ammunition. I didn’t ask for a room with a view, but I have one nonetheless. The sky flickers like sheet lightning between the apartment blocks and my door keeps juddering from low booms, as if an intruder is trying to force his way in. After an hour the explosions cease.

Russia’s drone attacks on civilians are exponentially increasing out of frustration with Ukraine’s recent battlefield gains in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia. The following morning, the news arrives that this particular attack has resulted in many wounded. Later, I head out with my friend, activist Alexei Stoyanovsky, into the countryside south of the city to the village of Vyvodove, known for its twelve chestnut trees. Vyvodove’s community leader Ludmila is 60 today and we join her in the cultural centre for a feast of traditional dishes like holodets and shuba. Although we happily toast the future with vodka, her colleagues tell us that “life is not honey.” They have to plant their potatoes this year with one eye on the sky. Luckily, they’re able to dispel their drone fear by joking about how they drop to the ground at any loud sound. Suddenly, while we’re chatting, Ludmila and Vira receive a drone warning and we have to leave, abandoning the food and fellowship. The apricot sun is setting in the sky and we linger over our goodbyes too long for the night guard Zhenya’s liking.

“What are you waiting for? Fireworks?” he acerbically asks us. 

The next day, Alexei and I are about to drive back to Vyvodove for a meeting at the bombed school when another community leader Vasily advises us not to come. He has just been notified that Russian drones are crossing the Dnipro River and can’t guarantee our safety. The security situation is as changeable as the spring weather.

That evening, we decide to call in on the drone hunters we met last April. This time, though, we are greeted not by the commander but by a grizzled soldier, Sasha — his dog tags hanging against his chest which is exposed to the elements under his zip-up camouflage fleece. The news is bad. Dima, the Humvee driver whom we previously met, is dead and three others were injured, their unit replaced. Dima was sitting in a field in his Humvee late on New Year’s Eve when a Lancet kamikaze drone struck. The commander was injured by shrapnel but managed to drag Dima’s body out of the Humvee before it was burnt beyond recognition. Sasha pulls the tarpaulin off the commander’s car to show us the shrapnel holes and explains that the unit’s Shahed detector doesn’t work for smaller drones. With fingers stained the shade of usvar, he lights another cigarette before telling us of his own injury when he was in the tank division, ferrying soldiers to the front line. 

“I don’t want to be indelicate in front of you,” he says awkwardly, “but we got out of the T72 tank to go to the toilet. Just then an FPV drone hit the tank. That’s how God saved us.”

Sasha’s drone-hunting unit has the same problems as before with an out-of-date artillery gun. “We can do anything, but we can do nothing,” he admits with a shrug. He comes from the frontline city of Nikopol and, before he left, he taught his wife to use a machine gun in case the Russians would cross the Kakhovka Reservoir. “She was scared at first,” he says, “but I told her to take the gun like you take a husband.”

Back in Zaporizhia, there have been two attacks on religious centres today. We stop off at the Jewish Centre where the windows have been blown out by a drone. The hole in the lane beside it has been filled with sand in makeshift repair, but we leave fast as we don’t want to be mistaken for Russian spies arriving to write their report. It’s not until the next day, however, that we go to the Baptist Church in the industrial Shevchenko district and witness the glide bomb destruction. People from churches all over the city have come to help. A much-loved member of the congregation, Ruslan, was killed with three others injured. He was plastering an interior wall and had just gone out to the porch when the glide bomb struck. The porch has been blown far into the grounds of a nearby hotel and we are told that parts of Ruslan’s body were found scattered in a tree, the rest buried under bricks. The pastor shows us the patch of white plaster on the wall where Ruslan had been working. It is like the shape of a ghost, unfinished.

“This shows that right now Russia has no Christian values,” says the chaplain. “All we can do is pray that they’ll repent.”

As we depart, polystyrene balls from the church’s insulation are rolling in the breeze like blossom.

At 5.45 am I leave Zaporizhia for Sumy in the north, welcoming the sight of rain which means less likelihood of a full-scale attack. The minibus, mostly full of soldiers, weaves around potholes, the grey craters reminiscent of lunar images sent back by the Artemis mission. We keep shuttling past freshly sown fields towards Dnipro, and then on to the soft dreamy greys of Kharkiv. The nearer we get to Sumy, the more the lines of barbed wire and dragon’s teeth appear across the fields. Instead of the usual tractors, there are JCBs digging trenches. It evokes the World War II slogan “Dig for Victory” and makes me shiver to think that the army may soon be sowing men in these bunkers. Later, I’m told that people in Sumy worry that the fortifications are mostly for effect and the east side isn’t properly protected.

At Klymentove, which was pulverised by Russia in 2022, the bus veers off the road onto a makeshift bridge. Sumy like Kharkiv is only 30 kms from the Russian border and its industrial outskirts have been largely destroyed. Steel panels flap in the wind in pale strips as thin as slices of salted pork. At the main checkpoint topped with a drone net, I have to show my passport.

Two Baptist pastors, Mykola and Pavlo, meet me at the main Petropavlivska Street in the heart of the university area. On Palm Sunday 2025 two Iskander missiles killed thirty-five people. Mykola recalls the “apocalyptic” strike in detail as it broke his church’s windows. There is no permanent monument erected but baskets and buckets of flowers line the road. There are still holes in the pavement shaped like footprints of the departed. The white stucco from the pillars belonging to the stately Institute of Applied Physics crumbles in Pavlo’s hands — they are like tiered wedding cakes left out to spoil in the rain. 

I have dinner at the Optima Hotel which has been restored after being damaged by two Shahed drones, then head to my own hotel, the sounds of war filtering from the north. The proliferation of lounge bars attests to the busy night life here. In the shadow of the Cathedral is a “Good Boys Club”, boasting the image of a grinning horned skeleton carrying a sickle in one hand, a missile in the other. As my phone dies, I ask Oleksiy, a juggler-turned-administrator, for directions.

“Did you hear that?” I ask of one particularly loud explosion.

“I don’t even notice. So what? As long as I’m still here is all that matters. It’s already in the past.”

Megaphone warnings about drones blare out from passing cars. These authoritative male voices seem to come from a dystopian future, but are simply a throwback to the winter power cuts when sirens stopped working. Once back in my hotel room, I check out the logistics; in the event of a drone attack, can I reach the corridor quickly without fumbling around with the door key?

The night, thankfully, is peaceful. The next morning, a Monday, it is as quiet as a Sunday. On Soborna (Freedom) Street the tulips are still closed, a tight smile of red splitting through the green. Women are busy mopping the floor of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral.  In a city like Sumy, one’s perceptions can become warped — I mistake some old strands of Christmas streetlights for a drone net.

Outside my train back to Kyiv, Irina is saying goodbye to her FPV drone operator boyfriend. Once we are on our way, Irina, a divorce lawyer, tells me, “My antidepressant in the war is dance.” Salsa is her particular dance of choice.

There are other means of generating joy. “My flat is like an illuminations house,” she continues with a smile. “I buy USB lamps for the power cuts and project all these shapes onto the walls — Santas for Christmas, hearts for Valentine’s Day. I have to have some magic during the war.” 

The sacrifice continues, but reports from the battlefield are encouraging

However, she finds it hard to leave her boyfriend and, when he’s at his forward position, she keeps her phone pressed to her heart in Kyiv waiting to hear from him. In military code, he replies “++” to let her know he’s fine. Sometimes, when they argue, they darkly joke, “Do you want me to be 200?” 200 is the code for dead. Irina has turned down his offer of marriage, explaining, “I’m not ready. In war I can’t make plans. I only think of today.” She reveals her traumatic experience of escaping from an occupied village in the early days of the war and being shot at by Russian soldiers. It’s clear her brush with death has influenced her in embracing an existentialism tinged with humanitarianism. “Maybe I don’t marry, maybe I can just use today to make him happy and that’s enough.”

Back in Kyiv, a waiter at my hotel says, “After four years of war, we are all very tired,” illustrating his point by asking me to pour the kettle for my tea myself. The surrounding streets are filled with electronic posters of soldiers wearing hi-tech goggles and using consoles. The city is shorn of the usual displays of fallen soldiers. A new pragmatism has set in. Outside St Michael’s Monastery mourners holding flowers troop behind the coffin of an Azov soldier. A bugler plays as soldiers salute. The sacrifice continues, but reports from the battlefield are encouraging. Ukraine may not produce as many drones as Russia, but its innovative use of them is slowly starting to give them the upper hand.