Young Ukrainians risking their lives building deadly kamikaze drones to hunt down and kill Russian soldiers
We’re racing across town in battle-torn eastern Ukraine, trying to keep up with a battered BMW driven by an 18-year-old with his 21-year-old mate urging him on; but they aren’t joyriding youngsters. They’re soldiers in the military and part of a special unit, and they’re taking us to their headquarters.
We had met an hour or so earlier when we pulled up outside another small house they operate from, long since abandoned by its owners after a year of continuous shelling from the Russian forces.
It’s the same across much of the Donbas – the civilians have moved out and the army has moved in.
We can’t film outside as their location is secret, but we’re led into a gloomy corridor and through a curtain.
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Inside two boys are working, one with a soldering iron and another tapping furiously on a computer, data and codes scrolling up the screen.
Beside them, an AK-47 has been leaned against the wall.
In a glass-fronted cabinet are rows of sealed plastic tubes, next to the stacks of batteries and covering an entire shelf, piles of neatly stacked drones – the type you’d buy in a high street shop.
This secret base is home to the 93rd brigade’s kamikaze drone team, known as the Seneca unit.
A kamikaze drone exploding
Their job is quite simple, but the danger is acute.
The team stationed here take donated drones, reprogramme them so they can’t be detected in flight, attach explosives to them using cable ties, go to within one or two kilometres of the frontline in Bakhmut, and using virtual reality goggles, fly the drone into the Russian lines.
It’s crazy – but it works.
Anna is the commander of this group of four. “I’m just a very little commander,” she tells me.
Anna, 23, says she may have children once the war is over
She’s just 23 but she looks younger. She is an expert at logistics and has been put in charge of the three boys.
I ask her what her family thinks of her being here.
“They worry. But they can’t say anything because I am an adult, and they may agree or disagree, but they do agree to help us,” she says.
She tells me her mum and dad send them care packages and collect donations for them to buy more equipment.
Anna reveals she got married during the war, and so I ask her where her husband is.
“He’s just outside,” she says, laughing. He is also serving.
“We are fighting for our land, for our history, for our culture. We are fighting for our freedom, serenity and fighting for our people. Russia has stolen everything that is Ukrainian, is Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian history, unfortunately,” she says.
Anna hopes that when this war ends, it will be the end of conflict with Russia for good.
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She tells me when it’s over, she has plans for a new life.
“I’m keen on CrossFit, maybe after this, or maybe something else with sport, or maybe I’ll have some children, I don’t know…”
With the call sign “Miami”, one of the operators is just 18. He’s from here in the Donbas, and his father is fighting as well.
‘Miami’, 18, was nine years old when Russia first invaded in 2014
To them, the Bakhmut battle is an attack on their actual home.
“Miami” was just nine years old when Russia first invaded in 2014, and he says although it’s sort of been normal for him to live through the conflict in the Donbas, he didn’t expect to see full-scale war on these streets.
“It feels very strange maybe because not many time ago I walked on the streets, walked in this place. It’s not just about Konstantinovka, Chasiv Yar, Novodmytrivka, Bakhmut. It’s very strange to see this place at war.”
Mark, 21, says he joined up a few months after the Russian invasion started last year. He says he’s learnt the art of making and priming the kamikaze drones on the job.
He motions for me to sit down and shows me in detail how he sets the explosives up. He attaches wires, tiny batteries, and a simple triggering device that blinks a red light, before turning solid, signalling the charge is set.
Mark, 21, joined the military not long after the Russian invasion
“It’s like Hollywood,” he tells me, laughing.
Holding the tube, he slowly moves it in the air, simulating it is flying, and then smashes it into the wall.
I jump.
It may not be armed but it’s still a tube of high explosives and fragments.
He, just like the others watching on as we chat, says they have no choice but to fight even if it’s a bit scary.
“You have the explosions in your hands, just like this blinking LED, and you know, this can just like boom in your hands and just like that, it sends you to the grave,” he tells me.
“But I’m happy, it’s like absurdity of our life because it’s scary, and everyone who tells you that it’s not scary, it’s like b******t.
“It’s scary, it’s scary to attach the bomb, scary to just, like, land and just like do all these things. But you know your motivation, you know what’s behind you is just like a nightmare.”
The young people say they have no choice but to fight
The dedication, determination and complete absence of fear are all the more disturbing to me because I can’t help but think that they’re mainly younger than my own children, yet every day they risk their lives to kill Russian soldiers.
At their headquarters, a young woman in her early 20s with dyed-blue hair stares intently at her computer.
Above her and on three walls are large monitors with a mosaic of screens.
They are live drone feeds of the Bakhmut battlefield. They pass real-time information to the soldiers fighting on the ground. They can see the Russian soldiers and they can warn the Ukrainian units of their movements.
We can’t film the feeds because of operational security, but one of the soldiers, Artem, shows me what is happening – and explains Russia’s tactics as we watch.
A tech soldier – also part of the kamikaze drone team
“The main purpose now is to make sure that we can hold the city, and we won’t give up our flanks because Russians are trying to come around, you see here?” he says, pointing at the screen.
“They are trying to breach us everywhere, like their tactics right now is to constantly attack from every direction.”
When artillery or mortars can’t be used because of the danger of friendly fire they call up Anna’s team and send them to the front to carry out a focused hit.
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Sky’s Stuart Ramsay with Artem
This is a full-on military unit involved in a deadly war, yet one can’t forget their age.
While we filmed, I could smell a bag of popcorn heating up in the microwave. Like any youngster anywhere in the world perhaps, they like munching on popcorn while working away.
It really is heartbreaking to me.
This generation is now at war and shouldn’t be, but then again, everyone in Ukraine is now.
Stuart Ramsay reports from eastern Ukraine with camera operator Toby Nash, and producers Dominique Van Heerden, Artem Lysak, and Nick Davenport.
Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.
Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.
His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Gaza latest: UK calls out Israel for ‘manmade catastrophe’
Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.
A child attempts to access food from a charity kitchen in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters
But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident. The report dismissed as wholly inaccurate, based on biased, inaccurate data and influenced not by fact, but by the whims of Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees humanitarian efforts in Gaza, claimed the IPC had ignored its data and presented a “one-sided report”, before claiming that “hundreds of truckloads of aid are still awaiting collection by the UN and international organisations”.
What is so striking is that there is no grey area between these two versions.
In one, Israel has obstructed the delivery of aid and allowed hunger to turn into famine; in the other, it is Hamas that has caused the crisis by stealing aid and exploiting hunger as a political tool to try to win global sympathy.
People in Beit Lahia take sacks of flour from an aid convoy en route to Gaza City. Pic: AP
Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, so we are reliant on the work of colleagues who live there.
But the images are striking – emaciated people holding begging bowls, people scrambling towards aid drops or clambering over trucks carrying bags of flour. And all around them, shattered buildings.
Aid is continuing to be dropped by air, but humanitarian groups say it is not enough. Pic: Reuters
We heard from a man in his 70s, who used to weigh 70kg, but who has lost almost half his body weight.
“Now, because of malnutrition, my weight has dropped to just 40,” Hassan Abu Seble said. “I suffered both a stroke and a heart attack. They had to put in a stent to help me recover, and I thank God that my organs are still functioning.”
The Israeli government, and many across the country, will maintain that Hamas bears the responsibility for everything that has happened to Gazans – that it was the attack on 7 October, 2023, that was the sole precipitant for the suffering, death and hunger that has followed.
But from around much of the rest of the world, the condemnation is deafening, accusing Israel of allowing famine to fester.
The body of a child is carried from the scene of an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Pic: AP
David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the Israeli government had caused a “man-made famine” by blocking the distribution of aid, and described that as a “moral outrage”.
The question, as so often before, is what that rhetoric leads to. And, so long as the United States doesn’t join the chorus of disapproval, does widespread global disapproval mean anything?
There is also a question now of Gaza’s future.
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In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, we found a large sign that says “Make Gaza Jewish Again”. It is a slogan, and a sentiment, that is supported by plenty.
“Yes, of course I agree,” says one man as he walks past, carrying a large pack of drinks. It turns out that he used to live in a Jewish settlement in Gaza until it was shut by the Israeli government two decades ago, but he has never stopped believing that Gaza is rightly Israel’s property.
“The people there now – they should leave. They could go to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. It is our land. And yes, I would like to go back there.”
He did not believe there was a famine. “They have lots of food,” he told me.
Another man, Avraham, was more conciliatory, but insisted there had never been a country like Israel “that is fighting a war against a country but is also sending in so much humanitarian aid for the people”.
Gaza City is now the focal point of so much. Famine is spreading from this heart just as troops prepare to encircle the city. A ceasefire could come, but so could a huge military assault. And all the while, the hunger will get worse.
Approval of a huge new Chinese embassy in London has been delayed by the government over redacted areas on the embassy’s plans.
Beijing hasn’t fully explained why there are blacked-out areas in its planning application after housing minister Angela Rayner demanded an explanation earlier this month.
The government has now delayed its decision over whether construction can go ahead from 9 September to 21 October, saying it needed more time to consider the application.
The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the delay and said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.
“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” said the embassy in a statement.
Site of planned Chinese embassy
Royal Mint Court, the site of the proposed embassy. File pic: PA
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans.
It added that additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out.
Protests have been held outside the proposed site. File pic: Feb 2025, PA
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” said DP9 in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
The embassy, which would be the largest in Europe, is planned for the 216-year-old site of the old Royal Mint Court next to the Tower of London.
However, opposition from local residents, lawmakers and pro-democracy campaigners means planning approval has been delayed for the past three years.
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Earlier this month, the embassy described claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s
national security as “despicable slandering”.
However, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has ties to a network of politicians critical of the country, called the explanations “far from satisfactory”.
Luke de Pulford, who is a long-standing critic of the embassy plans, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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