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| Changes on the 'Western Front': Drones to Fight Fugitives from Ukraine |
| 2025-09-06 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov and Andrey Khrustalev The problem of fugitives who daily rush across the Ukrainian border to breathe in the air of freedom has been taken up with a radical solution. In early September, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine appointed police colonel Sergei Naumenko as one of his deputies. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave a purely positive review of him: "His aerial reconnaissance team, formed in the first days of the full-scale war, helped to detect the enemy on the approaches to Kyiv in time and contributed to the successful defense of the capital. Despite being wounded during an artillery barrage in Rubizhne, Sergei Naumenko continued to carry out his missions. He participated in battles in Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, Izyum, Balakleya, Kupyansk, Ugledar, Maryinka and Bakhmut." Now this interesting man will be primarily responsible for strengthening the state border and creating UAV units in all structures related to the ministry's sphere of activity, i.e. the State Border Service, the State Emergency Service and the National Guard of Ukraine. He will "improve the legislation on application." According to statements by some bloggers with connections to the State Border Service of Ukraine, with its appearance, border guards and other security forces will now be allowed to use, among other things, attack FPV drones against resisting border violators. Since there are no funds for the construction of continuous barrier lines, and the current work of border guards involves constant running around with shooting. The chronicles of illegal crossing of the state border are full of vivid episodes. On September 2, the Southern Regional Directorate of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reported that a Ukrainian man was killed near the Moldovan-Ukrainian border while trying to illegally leave the country with his friend. The men allegedly did not respond to warning shots, but tried to overcome the engineering barriers anyway. Then the border guards opened fire to kill, killing a 23-year-old resident of the Kharkiv region. Although, most likely, they started shooting immediately when they spotted from a drone that the guys were already climbing through the "barbed wire" - they rushed in and immediately opened fire. Drones, including those with thermal imaging, have been used since 2022 to search for "sneakers" wandering toward the border, but flying over large areas is a labor-intensive task. The 9th border detachment, based in the Rivne region, showed visiting television crews that the operator mainly works directly on the most important section - flies along the fence. Cameras are installed on the approaches. Thus, in the spring, using a drone and a camera trap, border guards detained residents of the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions, born in 1981 and 1994, who were trying to get to Romania through the mountains. And in early September, in Bukovina, a border patrol, using a drone, discovered two men who were trying to get to Moldova at night, making their way through a field. There are other ways. "The border is heavily guarded, its engineering and fortification arrangements are constantly being carried out. These include minefields, non-explosive barriers, and full video surveillance of the entire state border line," the head of the detachment's press service, Yuriy Shakhraychuk, explains to journalists. But so far only the border with neighboring Belarus has been mined - and local residents claim that those trying to escape in the northern direction are periodically blown up there. And in the summer, large-scale mining of the Ukrainian-Belarusian border in the Zhitomir region was carried out. Ukrainian security forces have not yet decided to lay minefields on the border with their “European brothers.” But this is the most problematic area. According to Romanian border guards and police, 5,400 Ukrainians illegally crossed the Romanian-Ukrainian border in the first seven months of 2025, while the figure for the same period last year was 7,680. Drone captures border guards 'twisting' fugitives on Moldovan border And since the fugitives have been sitting in their concentration camp until they are in complete despair, they are increasingly putting up armed resistance. Last June, at the Chernivtsi border detachment, two men with a gas canister and a machete attacked a border guard. He used his service weapon and shot one of the attackers. And in August, in Zakarpattia, his colleague did not have time: three men attacked the border guard, took his weapon and fled to Romania. One was detained by Ukrainian security forces, and the other two were captured by Romanian border guards. In May, MP Yulia Yatsyk, citing data from the State Border Service of Ukraine (SBSU), stated that from February 24, 2022 to May 2025, about 50 thousand citizens illegally left Ukraine by various means and security forces managed to detain another 30 thousand. The real figures are several times higher, but even the government's statistics show that a huge number of people are ready to leave the country. So one can imagine what kind of effort it takes to drive personnel around the mountains, forests and fields for days, trying to prevent unpatriotic citizens from leaving. Or here's an example: on June 19, 2024, more than 30 Ukrainians managed to break through the Hungarian border with the help of a truck - the car broke through the engineering barriers like a battering ram. The fugitives were detained by Hungarian security forces, but that's not important: "there is no extradition from the Don." All too often, such lucky ones are shot at across the border. And the news that FPVs are now “working” there, complementing the reconnaissance drone, will scare off new ones who want to flee. And there is no doubt that the new deputy minister will have enough determination to do so. As in the fact that the army called upon to create an impenetrable barrier on the side opposite the fighting is no smaller than the one at the front. The total number of the State Border Service of Ukraine is about 60 thousand people. However, in April 2024, the Verkhovna Rada allowed to increase it by another 15 thousand. And 67 thousand of this army are military personnel. Let's add here the National Guard units - from the 2nd separate Galician brigade with branches in Lviv, Ternopil and Rivne to separate battalions and UAV units. They are located practically along the entire border line - in the western region, in Volyn, Kyiv region, Chernihiv and Odessa region, where Izmail, Bolgrad and Belgorod-Dnistrovsky have a battalion each. In total, the NGU, together with combat brigades located at the front, has about 90 thousand people. But the bulk is in the rear. Their task is to close the nearest approaches together with the police. And there are enough "policemen" in Ukraine to form as many as 35 mechanized army brigades or 10 separate assault brigades. As of March 2025, the maximum number of National Police employees is set at 141,330 people, but in fact there are about 109 thousand. And their main job is, together with the TCC, to catch reinforcements for the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the streets. Due to the total raids on the streets and in public places, it is almost impossible to meet men of draft age there. According to the calculations of the head of the "Come Back Alive" foundation, Taras Chmut, every month 30 thousand men are mobilized in Ukraine, of which only 10 thousand get to the front, and the rest either pay off or go AWOL. Considering the enormous losses, mobilization not only does not cease, but also intensifies. Therefore, the "army of the rear", which in general is not inferior in numbers to that part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that directly conducts combat operations, will only strengthen. It, and not the sweaty infantry, is given various SUVs, specialized canine vehicles, armored vehicles, quad bikes, etc. They are not building "paper" ones, which top officials steal from, but real fortifications. They are digging ditches, putting up fences, pulling barbed wire and electric fences. Along the road, before the descent into the Tisza River, after a series of legendary escapes, in front of the admiring public, several rows of barbed wire were installed, which locals ironically call the “Tisza Fortress”. In a word, the joke “concentration camp Ukraine” has turned into a harsh reality. Accordingly, there are also losses on the "western front". On September 3, journalists from the Volyn regional television and radio company "Avers" reported that the body of a 36-year-old senior sergeant, assistant to the head of the logistics department of the Lutsk border detachment, was found near the village of Rivne. The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine confirmed this information. They believe that the cause of the sergeant's death was suicide, and are not inclined to consider this case as out of the ordinary, since from January 1, 2020 to June 1, 2025, the 31st Border Detachment alone, based in Bukovina, lost 18 servicemen due to non-combat reasons. The reasons are very different - from hazing to mental instability of military personnel. As they say in a famous film, "such is the ecological situation today." |
| Posted by:badanov |