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The war in Ukraine is now largely being fought with drones, and Ukraine is at the cutting edge of drone innovation. Last year, Ukraine churned out some 2 million UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles. The UAVs are both large and small, from high-tech factories to mom-and-pop drone-making operations. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: In a courtyard surrounded by apartment blocks in Kyiv, we walk down some stairs to a tiny basement flat.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Andrii.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Andrii. Eleanor.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: Oh, hello.
There's three big dogs who live here. All around are tables full of drone parts and tools and tweezers and pliers. So these are the drone dogs.
ANDRII YUKHNO: Yeah. It's protecting from - it's our security.
BEARDSLEY: That's Andrii Yukhno, who supervises this FPV, that's first-person view, attack drone-making operation.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF SCREAMING)
BEARDSLEY: The windows are covered with paper, but cracked open, we hear children playing.
You have a playground here? School?
YUKHNO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Kindergarten.
BEARDSLEY: You're making drones right outside of a kindergarten.
YUKHNO: Yeah, but we don't show our drones for children.
BEARDSLEY: Yukhno says he got into drone making because he felt he just had to do something when the war started.
YUKHNO: We started with delivery in Kyiv - food, medicine, what people need. And we start with this and bigger, bigger, bigger.
BEARDSLEY: He used to be a barista. Everyone here seems to have had another existence before the full-scale invasion.
CHRISTINA PASHENKO: I'm super new here. I'm still training.
BEARDSLEY: Thirty-year-old Christina Pashenko (ph) recently left her job helping companies appear higher in internet searches because she said she wanted to do something that mattered. Now she's soldering wires to a circuit board. A thin wisp of smoke rises from her soldering wand.
PASHENKO: Now I feel super excited and a little bit proud of myself, even, that I can do something useful.
BEARDSLEY: Pashenko says the videos of thanks from soldiers on the front lines using their drones are hugely motivating. The commander of Ukraine's ground forces says drones struck and destroyed 22% more Russian targets in February than January, with first-person view drones leading the way.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
(APPLAUSE)
BEARDSLEY: One of Ukraine's most successful drone makers, Vyriy, recently celebrated its first thousand 100% Ukrainian-sourced drones with a media event. CEO Oleksii Babenko says it's important to be self-sufficient.
OLEKSII BABENKO: From the start of this war, every time when Ukraine needs something, we need to ask it a lot of time. So only one way how we can stay strong. It's only all that we make in Ukraine. So it's only Ukrainian soldiers, it's only Ukrainian manufacturers.
BEARDSLEY: Russia is a couple months behind Ukraine in drone innovation, but has much bigger production capacity, says Oleksandr Kamyshin, adviser to President Zelenskyy on strategic affairs. He calls it a technological race.
OLEKSANDR KAMYSHIN: Once you've got a technology, other side tries to counter this technology, and then you have to find another solution, and then the other side tries to counter it. It's a constant war of innovations and war of technologies.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRONE BUZZING)
BEARDSLEY: Back in the basement drone shop, the dogs open their eyes wide, uneasy as the team tests a drone in a metal cylindrical frame in the center of the room that allows it to fly, twist and flip. Thirty-seven-year-old Sasha Ptashnyk was a dancer before the full-scale invasion. He says he's making drones to help end this war on the best terms Ukraine can get.
SASHA PTASHNYK: (Through interpreter) We've got to be more realistic. Of course I'd like to get all of our land back. But from the beginning, we exaggerated our capacity, and we are fighting a very big enemy. We must be sober.
BEARDSLEY: Most sobering, says Ptashnyk, is that Ukraine's biggest ally, the U.S., may be abandoning his country.
OLEH HALAIDYCH: Originally, I'm a scientist.
BEARDSLEY: Part-time drone maker Oleh Halaidych has just sat down at his workstation. This scientist with a doctorate in the study of stem cells says making drones is probably the quickest, most impactful way of helping Ukraine.
HALAIDYCH: I think many of people who are - like, come from art, culture, science, they feel that this is a time of some different decisions.
BEARDSLEY: Science is slow, he says, and we need to do something to protect ourselves right now.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Kyiv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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