Ukrainian infantryman Aleksandr's ordeal, detailed in CJ Chivers' piece for the New York Times , began in the pitch-black hours one night in August, when a Russian drone targeted him and his patrol. He applied a tourniquet, discarded anything that might slow him down, and began the agonizing crawl back toward a distant woodlot he and his fellow soldiers had come from, knowing that daylight would only spur to action a "vicious new normal" in Russia's war in Ukraine—"small aerial attack drones, startlingly effective tools for finding and killing those caught" between their own front lines and those of the enemy. Aleksandr's crawl was punctuated by the constant threat of drone surveillance and attack, with each whine in the air forcing him to hide under a poncho and hope for the best.
Author: Jenn Gidman with Newser.AI
Published at: 2025-11-15 23:15:00
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