When traveling through a country at war, you can’t blindly trust the route provided by your phone’s navigator. You should also be aware of detours that are not marked on the map and know how to vet the type of detour. checkpoint what you are experiencing. Because these details indicate how close you are to the zone of hostilities.
At least they showed it before. Before drones changed the Ukraine war forever. It’s been several months since these Drones have taken over the skies of Donbassand now you have to pay attention to new signals to know if you are getting too close to the battle front.
The most unmistakable sign is that the road you are driving on is covered with a kind of giant mosquito net. Anti-drone network. The main function of these networks is to stop the FPVs (first-person view drones) that Moscow’s military fires indiscriminately at vehicles patrolling northern Donetsk.
“Technically, it is designed as follows. Drone gets stuck They are intertwined,” explains Evgeny Valchenko, head of the Civil-Military Cooperation Department of Ukraine’s 11th Corps.
Soldiers under Varchenko’s responsibility are responsible for installing these protective walls on the roads leading to the battle fronts of the Lyman-Kostiantynivka axis. “We’ve already covered Over 200km of roadAnd the work continues,” he asserts.
And to understand what this work is like, carried out all day while avoiding non-stop traffic jams and Russian air raids, it is best to accompany the troops who carry out the entire process for a day.
almost invisible
The vision you see when you approach one of these work teams is very strange. It looks like the soldiers are manipulating the air without anything in their hands. But there is an explanation for this. The new mesh that Ukraine is installing is so fine that not recognized Well, even from a distance.
Once you reach that height, everything makes sense and what looked like air turns green. Groups of men carry huge rolls of mesh made of very fine plastic in this color and place it on either side of the road. A few more soldiers begin to unroll the net, while the remaining soldiers climb onto a crane and pull it up a few meters above the ground.
Approximately 100 staff members work together. In addition to spreading the net on both sides of the road, it is also necessary to set up wooden posts every few meters and weave the net. steel cable framework It acts as a support.
“The regional administration is helping us with some supplies,” Valchenko admits, stressing that the network also protects civilian vehicles in the region. The truth is that the Russian FPV does not discriminate and there is an unstoppable increase in attacks on NGO facilities, rescue workers and even ambulances in both Donbass and Kherson.
“We have seen that when the enemy starts attacking certain areas of the road, they launch drones against civilian and military transport alike. But after setting up these networks, FPV is ineffective and Russia needs larger drones, and they are only launching drones against large military equipment,” the officer said.
deterrence
Valchenko argues that the mere existence of such a network has a deterrent effect on Russian drone pilots, going on to elaborate: “They understand that they will not be able to hit the target accurately and that there is a high probability that they will not be able to accomplish anything and lose the aircraft.” “It was in the summer of 2025 that they began to settle in this part of the Donbass.” The number of attacks has been significantly reduced” he added.
However, the anti-drone network not completely effective And they are also not suitable for the entire territory. “This is precisely the danger of FPV drones, that there is no 100% effective mechanism to neutralize them,” the officer stressed.
“When it comes to drones that operate on radio signals, adversaries continually modify them to evade signal obstruction systems. And when it comes to FPVs that operate on fiber optics, the only countermeasure at the moment is brute force,” he claims.
“You can’t protect a city’s built-up areas with a network, and right now there are only two options. or evacuate To all civilians of Donbass, Otherwise we will put hunting weapons in their hands. We teach each of them how to shoot down a drone,” he emphasizes.
The problem is that 198,500 civilians still live in the Donbas region, which is still under Ukrainian control, and more than 15,000 are in combat zones, where evacuation is already extremely difficult and it is impossible to set up an anti-drone network.
From the combat front to civilian use
These anti-drone barriers began to be used in frontline positions where Ukrainian soldiers were using fishing nets to protect their positions. The idea was later developed to protect roads where attacks on civilian vehicles are increasing.
They first tried nets of different densities. However, after it was established that it was sufficient for the holes in the grid to be smaller than the drone, standard sizes with larger cells began to be used to reduce costs.
“The value of cooperation lies in the fact that we can face unexpected challenges,” Valchenko reflects. “And thanks to the support of local governments, we are able to respond to the changes that occur during a war, for example to install infrastructure that improves the safety of everyone.”
“However, today it is impossible to fully guarantee the safety of civilians living in the most dangerous areas, because there are no technical means to stop these drones,” the officer insisted before saying goodbye.
The United Nations wants to upgrade these to the category of crimes against humanity. “Manhunt” The Russian military is experimenting with FPV drones in Ukrainian cities, resulting in the displacement of tens of thousands of people.
But while waiting for this UN complaint to be useful, it seems that the only option for the residents of Donbass to protect themselves from Putin’s FPV is to abandon their homes, memories and everything they have. And yet you could be blown up by a drone while on the run to escape war.
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