Commanded by a man known only as Jaeger, a former forest ranger turned soldier, the unit operated on instinct, urgency, and routine. On any given night, they could expect to confront up to a hundred Iranian-designed drones, most of them on course toward deeper Ukrainian targets like Kyiv. As red tracer rounds tore through the dark, the tension on the ground mirrored the threat overhead. The drone engines buzzed faintly before appearing in the sky, often too fast and too high for the old Soviet weapons to hit. Yet the soldiers kept firing.
These men, many former civilians — a builder, a farmer, a fighter — now live inside a cycle of constant engagement. When a drone slips past them, Jaeger shrugs off disappointment, explaining that there's little time for emotions in this kind of work. Success is a fleeting reward; failure just passes the burden to another unit down the line.
Drone attacks have become routine for Ukraine, especially in regions like Sumy, which lies directly along the Russian frontier. When visibility is reduced — by cloud cover or rain — the drones often fly beyond the troops' line of sight, rendering even their best efforts ineffective. Despite this, they persist, day after day, locked in what Jaeger describes as a cycle without end — “like Groundhog Day.”
Behind the battlefield, the toll of war is felt just as sharply. Margaryta Husakova, a 37-year-old mother of eight, bore witness to that firsthand. On May 17, she boarded a bus with her sister, uncle, and mother, planning what should have been a routine visit to the city. The bus never reached its destination. A Russian drone strike reduced it to shrapnel and carnage. Margaryta’s sister was decapitated by the blast, her mother struck fatally, and her uncle thrown from the wreckage. Margaryta herself survived, her right arm shattered and now held together by steel rods.
She recounted the moment with devastating clarity, the grief etched into every word. Sitting on a bench outside an evacuee reception center, surrounded by sandbags and cigarette smoke, she admitted to fearing for her children’s lives more than her own. “Maybe we’ll have to run away even further,” she said. “It’s scary everywhere.”
For the fighters on the front line, the emotional weight is no lighter. Many, like the soldier with the call sign "Student," have sacrificed family for the war effort. His daughters now live abroad, and his marriage didn’t survive the distance. His platoon began with thirty neighbors; now, only four are alive.
Soldiers speak with resignation about the future — the belief that even if a ceasefire were signed tomorrow, the war would resume in a few years. They view Russian ambitions as long-term, entrenched, and imperialist. As they return to training or duty, many carry wounds that aren’t visible: the absence of loved ones, lost time, and the slow erosion of normalcy.
Even after years of fighting, the sense of urgency hasn’t faded. The threat has only intensified. On a recent night, Russia launched more than 300 drones toward Kyiv alone, a massive assault that pierced air defences and left at least thirty civilians dead in the aftermath. The skies have become the new front line, where soldiers like Jaeger’s unit face a modern threat with outdated tools, and families like Margaryta’s confront the price of a war that offers them no respite.
Amid sunflower fields and dragon’s teeth anti-tank barriers, the Sumy region holds its breath each night, waiting for the next attack. Each siren, each shadow in the sky, is a reminder: the war doesn’t pause, and neither can those who defend against it.