Surrender to a drone? Ukraine offers it to Russian soldiers

KYIV, Ukraine – Tens of thousands of drones have been used across Ukraine to kill the enemy, spy on their formations and deliver bombs to their targets.

But this month the Ukrainian military started a program to use drones in a more unusual role:

Lead the Russian soldiers who want to surrender.

The program had its genesis in late November, when the Ukrainian military released footage of a Russian soldier who drops his weapon, raises his hands, and nervously follows a path traced by a drone that leads him to soldiers of the 54th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army.

A few weeks later, the Ukrainian General Staff released an instructional video explaining how Russian soldiers could surrender to a Ukrainian drone, and it is now part of a larger effort by Ukraine to persuade Russian soldiers to who surrender.

The program, called “I want to live”, includes a hotline, a website and a communication channel Telegramall dedicated to communicating with Russian soldiers and their families.

It is too early to tell whether the drone effort will attract significant numbers of Russian defectors.

But it adds another avenue for Ukraine to recruit Russian defectors, this time with a decidedly modern twist on the old information warfare tactic.

And, even if it’s just that, it can help erode Russian morale on the battlefield.

Russian defeats have already provided Ukraine with an opportunity to exploit that low morale, especially in the months following the Kremlin’s September mobilization, which sent thousands of new recruits into fierce battles with little training and few supplies.

Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s POW Treatment Coordination Headquarters, said in an interview on Monday that Ukraine had received more than 4,300 direct requests of information on how to surrender through the “I want to live” program.

It is not possible to independently verify these claims.

Yatsenko said the army would not reveal information about the number of Russians prisoners in Ukraine for security reasons.

Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry’s intelligence department, said Ukraine had received 1.2 million inquiries about the program since it was launched on Sept. 18.

Most of the requests came from Russia, he said, and the vast majority concerned appeals from “people who are studying for themselves or their relatives the possibility of saving their lives in the bloody and unjust war”.

Over the past 10 months, both Russia and Ukraine have conducted intense information campaigns against enemy soldiers with leaflets, social media posts, radio appeals, text messages and television campaigns, all aimed at persuading them to surrender.

In May, when the Russians razed towns and cities and began devouring land in eastern Ukraine, not all the guns were loaded with explosives.

Some Soviet-era self-propelled howitzers had shells rigged to explode in the air and scatter leaflets over Ukrainian-controlled territory, according to Zvezda, a Russian state-run television station run by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

“We give the last warning to the Ukrainian Nazis to surrender,” a gunner named Vadim told the network.

Most recently, the Russians announced that their drone operators were sending SMS messages to Ukrainian mobile phone subscribers telling them to lay down their arms.

There is no evidence that the Russian drones they had no effect.

The Ukrainian campaign relied on high-tech and low-tech media.

Artillery units routinely use Vampire multiple launch rocket systems to fire shells with 1,500 leaflets each at Russian positions.

Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said it was a way to give “the Russian occupiers one last chance to surrender” when there was no internet connection.

“Otherwise, the only thing awaiting them on Ukrainian soil is death,” he said.

Yatsenko, a spokesman for the POW group, said the Ukrainians were also handing over captured Russian soldiers who are being released as part of the prisoner exchanges of war postcards with information on how to surrender.

That way, if they come back to fight, they’ll know how to surrender.

When Ukraine captures Russian soldiers, it sends them to prison camps.

The main one is located in the northwest, near Lviv.

Ukraine has allowed some strictly controlled media visits to the camp.

It also allows for routine visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The most far-reaching Ukrainian effort is the “I want to live” program, which includes a Russian-language Telegram channel that already has more than 40,000 subscribers, mostly in Russia or Russian-controlled territories.

Telephone operators also work around the clock in an undisclosed location in Kiev, answering up to 100 calls per dayYatsenko said.

But just as surrender was considered one of the most dangerous acts on the battlefield in World War I, the same is true in Ukraine today.

With a front line stretching for hundreds of miles and the terrain between the trenches a treacherous mining wasteland guarded by snipers and under almost constant shelling, staging a surrender involves dangers for all those involved.

This is where drones come into play.

The surrender captured in video released in November and geolocated by military analysts in the eastern Donbass region was something of an accident, according to Yatsenko.

It wasn’t planned, and the fact that it worked – with all the possible things that could have gone wrong – made the Ukrainian military think it was an idea that could go wrong. could be expandedShe said.

The Ukrainian General Staff got to work producing a smart video with instructions on how Russian soldiers can surrender a drone ready in early December.

The first step is to call the project “I want to live” and receive instructions and coordinates.

“It is important to arrive punctually at the indicated point and wait for the quadcopter to appear, after which, hands up“, the video informs the Russians.

“After the drone shows the movement vector, the prisoners must follow it,” they are told.

The drone will fly at “walking speed” and “guide them to the Ukrainian positions”.

If the drone’s battery fails, the soldier must wait for a new battery to arrive before continuing to move.

Yatsenko said the “how to surrender a drone” program is only in its infancy.

He declined to give exact numbers on how many Russians have surrendered to drones so far, but said there were more than a handful.

The Ukrainian program, according to Yatsenko, is the first designed to use drones on a large scale as part of a coordinated operation to encourage surrender.

“We are giving them one last chance to save their lives,” he said.

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