Ukraine’s Supply Runs Turn to Nightmares as Drones Menace Roads Far Beyond the Front

 As the daylight was fading, a Ukrainian pickup truck sped east to relieve exhausted troops on the front line about 12 miles away. Suddenly, an explosive drone slammed into the truck’s rear, tearing off the axle and throwing the vehicle into the air.

The five soldiers scrambled out and sprinted toward the trees, wary of more drones.

“The enemy picks a stretch of road and turns it into a nightmare,” said a junior sergeant who was in the pickup when it was hit in the Donetsk region earlier this month. “Every vehicle that passes gets hit.”

In Eastern Ukraine, supply roads have become nearly as dangerous as the trenches.

In recent months, Russia has begun employing new methods to extend the range of its attack drones and relentlessly target Ukrainian logistics in an effort to stop men and supplies from reaching the front. Roads 20 miles from the nearest Russian positions, which were long considered safe, are now coming under regular attack.

In targeting supply lines, Russian forces are hoping to isolate the remaining Ukrainian-held strongholds in the Donetsk region that they have been unable to seize in 3½ years of brutal assaults.

Kyiv is adapting, installing antidrone netting over supply routes, traveling at night and moving in smaller vehicles instead of trucks.

Still, Russia’s focus on taking out logistics is exacerbating the existing shortages—of everything from water to ammunition and, especially, manpower—along the front line, by making it even more challenging to move anything in or out of the trenches.

“A year ago, these kinds of strikes were episodic,” said Lt. Col. Dmytro Zaporozhets of Ukraine’s 11th Army Corps. “Now, we face systemic attack waves targeting logistics routes, depots, roads into towns, and evacuation roads.”

Both sides in the conflict have targeted supply lines throughout the war. In 2022, Ukraine pummeled Russian efforts to move materiel across the Dnipro River with American-made rockets, ultimately forcing Moscow to retreat from the regional capital of Kherson in the south.

More recently, explosive drones have made it nearly impossible to move men to front-line trenches in armored vehicles, which are easy targets. For more than a year, soldiers from both sides have mostly hiked the last few miles on foot, carrying supplies with them. Troop rotations have become so difficult that soldiers sometimes spend months in a position, because it isn’t possible to safely send in replacements.

Now, technological advances are allowing Russia to menace Ukrainian roads further from the front than in the past. Drones connected to their pilots by fiber-optic cables—which means they can’t be downed by electronic jammers—can now travel more than 12 miles beyond the front line.

In addition, Ukrainians troops said that Russian forces have begun using a new tactic in recent months: Heavy “mother ship” drones fly well beyond the line of control and release smaller explosive drones, which then attack Ukrainian vehicles. The mother ship also serves as a relay antenna, to keep the drones in contact with their pilots. Though 20 miles was already within artillery range, the drones are far more accurate, especially against moving targets, such as supply trucks.

Up until recently, the road that connected Izyum, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, to Slovyansk, in Donetsk, was considered safe, Ukrainian troops said. This month, however, the road has come under regular fire—including targeting civilian vehicles.

“Every month, the problem gets worse…the enemy can fly farther and in larger volumes,” said a senior lieutenant from the 225th Brigade. “They hit everything. They burn minibuses with people. They burn ordinary cars.”

Ukrainian officials say they are dealing with the new challenges, including by installing antidrone netting over key supply roads in Donetsk. In addition, Kyiv has retaken several villages there recently, according to officials and open-source channels. Ukrainian troops also say they are hitting Russian supply lines.

Still, the growing range of Russian drones is making life tougher for soldiers and civilians alike.

“Delays are constant now,” said a 38-year-old sergeant from a reconnaissance unit. “Sometimes a unit waits for ammo that should have been delivered a day earlier, and in the meantime they can’t operate at full strength. Evacuating the wounded is harder.”

The drone nets, he added, weren’t a permanent fix—Russian drones often try to hit poles that hold them up, collapsing the netting and instead turning it into an obstacle on the road.

“We constantly have to repair the damage” to the posts, said Vadym Filashkin, governor of the Donetsk region.

One 42-year-old medic, who goes by the call sign Buddha, says the condition of the roads near the front has severely deteriorated, complicating efforts to reach wounded soldiers and to keep them alive on the way out.

“You’re bouncing over holes, trying to give first aid while the car shakes like crazy,” he said. “There were times when we couldn’t get a needle into a vein because the car was throwing us around so hard. And we couldn’t slow down, because drones could hit us.”