Name: Meet the 'Peaky Blinders': Ukraine's drone squad defending Kharkiv | BBC News
Uploaded: 2024-05-27T05:26:00.000Z
Duration: 4 min 21 s
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Officials there say at least 12 people have been killed and 43 others wounded after Russian forces hit a DIY store in the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Two glide bombs hit the building on Saturday and some people are still missing.

Ukraine is still calling on the West to lift restrictions on the use of Western-supplied weapons in order to strike targets inside Russia and prevent similar attacks from over the border.

This call has now been backed by the head of NATO.

Instead Ukraine has had to largely rely on artillery and drones to push the Russians back.

Our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale reports from the front line.

They are now one of the most potent weapons of this war.

Cheap, mass-produced drones being used to deadly effect.

And here on the front they're helping Ukraine slow Russia's advance.

We can hold them back with drones and hurt them badly, but win with them unfortunately no.

But flat caps are where the similarity ends.

They've been trained by Western special forces.

In just a few weeks they've hunted down more than a hundred Russian soldiers.

Today they appear to be hiding, so they look for something else.

So you're stealing Russian rifles from the Russians, yes?

This is the second time that Alexander's fought for this territory, his home.

Then he grew strawberries, now he's planting bombs.

But he knows what they're doing won't end this war.

Right now it's like two more or less equal gladiators fighting each other and neither can defeat the other.

Yes, the conflict might be frozen maybe for several years or even decades, but this war will last a very long time.

When the Peaky Blinders try to fly a kamikaze drone into a target, their signal gets jammed.

Russian drones are as much of a threat to Ukrainian forces.

For both sides it's a constant game of hide and seek.

Ukraine says it has now slowed down the Russian front line, it has stabilised the situation, but there's still quite a fierce artillery battle going on.

Their much harder task will be to push the Russians back.

They might just weather this storm with the arrival of more Western weapons.

But what Ukraine really wants is permission to use those weapons to intercept Russian resupplies.

So you need to target inside Russia to stop them advancing here?

But they're still looking to the West to give them the tools to win.

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Meet the 'Peaky Blinders': Ukraine's drone squad defending Kharkiv | BBC News

situation

constant

determine

conflict