In Nikopol, Ukraine, even fire trucks aren’t safe from hostile drones.
That’s why two of the city’s newest fire trucks have anti-drone jammers mounted on them.
A German non-profit group, Ukraine-Hilfe Berlin, donated the trucks and jammers to help replace vehicles and equipment lost in drone attacks.
“Russian drones have been attacking fire-trucks in Nikopol… for some time now,” and have wounded some firefighters, said Vitali Olijnik, a member of the group, via email.
Nikopol sits on the north shore of the Dnipro River across from an occupied portion of Ukraine, meaning the city and its residents are in easy range of incoming drones. The same is true of the city of Kherson, on the same side of the river, about 200 kilometres southwest.
“Apart from artillery fire and missiles, there are a lot of drones which attack [Kherson] on a daily basis,” Tatyana Orgakova of the Ukraine Media Crisis Center said in a recent video after visiting the city.
A local paramedic told the Globe and Mail he receives 10 calls per day about drone attacks on civilians.
Mounting reports from Ukrainian areas along the front lines say civilians are frequently being hurt or killed by Russian drones. The United Nations says “a large portion” of civilian casualties in front-line areas last month involved drones — including roughly half of those in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the region of Kherson.
“This is, tragically, a daily reality for Ukrainians,” said Wayne Jordash of Global Rights Compliance, a non-governmental organization focused on human rights.
“Every day, Ukrainian prosecutors’ offices open criminal cases concerning the suspected use of drones in violation of international humanitarian law,” Jordash told CBC News by email, referring to the intentional targeting of civilians or when aggressors fail to make the necessary distinctions when attacking.
Some reports cite the use of small, first-person view (FPV) drones, which can be rigged to drop explosives on targets below.
Jordash says FPV drones “are an incessant threat” for civilians living near front-line areas, where some have reported “being subjected to sadistic ‘human safaris’ in which they are the target of Russian forces hunting them down.”
More and more drones
Russia launched its wide-ranging invasion of Ukraine 32 months ago, leaving both sides in all-out conflict ever since.
Ukraine has increasingly looked to drones to strike back, using an assortment of types to hit targets near and far from the front lines.
Oleksandra Molloy, a senior lecturer in aviation at Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra, says Ukraine had a small number of domestic companies involved in drone production and services at the war’s outset. Today, there are scores of companies working in this space.
“It was absolutely exponential growth,” Molloy said, noting Ukraine needed to not only develop and test the drones, but ramp up production and make them available on a continuous basis to the military.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early this month the country can now produce four million drones annually. He said last week said that Kyiv has purchased and provided one million of them for the front.
Yet alongside Ukraine’s own advancements, Russia has developed drone capabilities of its own.
Molloy says there are changes on the battlefield all the time, with new drones and new counter-measures being rapidly invented and implemented.
“It’s all evolving and developing as we speak,” said Molloy, the author of a newly published paper on the lessons learned from the use of drones in the Ukraine war.
Dangers across Ukraine
Bigger and longer-range drones can also wreak havoc — including in areas farther afield, like in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, where authorities say a child and two other people were killed on Tuesday in an overnight attack involving what Ukrainian media identified as Shahed-type drones — a type of kamikaze drone that’s considerably larger than an FPV drone.
Earlier this month, in the Black Sea port city of Chornomorsk, another attack involving similar drones saw at least one slam into an apartment building and cause a fire.
Chornomorsk Mayor Vasyl Huliaiev said the attack had hit “a peaceful city” and that “everyone understands that they target civilian infrastructure, which is very bad.”
Russia has denied targeting civilians, but its missiles and drones have routinely struck Ukrainian population centres.
Jordash said Russia has “weaponized drones extensively in attacks on civilian targets,” and he pointed out that incoming drones pose dangers even if they do not reach their intended targets.
“There are devastating consequences that may still occur due to falling debris of intercepted drones,” he said.
Ukraine’s own long-range attacks on Russian soil have tended to strike military and industrial targets — including air bases, oil refineries, fuel depots and naval ships. But its drones have also made appearances in Moscow.
‘There is no single answer’
Many variables come into play when defending against drones.
“There is no single answer for that,” said Molloy. The specific attributes of the attacking drones, their ability to evade detection and the tools the defending side has at its disposal, all factor into the mix.
She says stopping smaller drones can be challenging — because large-scale air defences aren’t necessarily the right tool.
“We can’t really spend those air missiles and air defences systems against … one or a few drones, it won’t be really sustainable,” said Molloy.
Jordash says forcing Russia to end the war is the most effective way to stop the harms that civilians are facing.
He said the invasion is “an illegal act of aggression,” which leaves states obliged under international law to work together to stop it.
“It seems quite obvious that the Ukrainian people have suffered the brunt of this unjust reality for long enough, and appropriate measures must be taken to remedy this serious breach,” Jordash said.
Published at Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:52:23 +0000
Blinken urges halt to Middle East conflict as Israel bombs historic Lebanese port city
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed on Wednesday for a halt to fighting between Israel and militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, but heavy Israeli airstrikes on a large historic Lebanese port city demonstrated that there was no respite.
Israel began to bomb the UNESCO-listed port city of Tyre on Wednesday roughly three hours after issuing an order online for residents to flee central areas. Huge clouds of thick smoke billowed above residential buildings.
Tens of thousands of people had already fled Tyre in recent weeks as Israel steps up its campaign to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both close allies of Iran.
The port is typically a bustling hub for the south — with fishermen, tourists and even UN peacekeepers on a break from deployments near the border spending time there by the sea. But Israel’s evacuation orders for the city this week have for the first time encompassed swaths of it, including right up to its ancient castle.
Blinken, who has travelled to the Middle East regularly since the outbreak of the war, is making his first trip since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, which Washington hopes can provide a new impetus for peace talks.
The trip is the last major U.S. peace push before a Nov. 5 presidential election between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, which could upend U.S. policy in the region.
Washington is also seeking to head off a further widening of the conflict in anticipation of Israeli retaliation for an Iranian Oct. 1 missile attack, launched by Tehran in solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas. Blinken said on Wednesday that Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.
Dozens of Hezbollah fighters reported killed
In Lebanon, Israel’s military said it had killed three Hezbollah commanders and some 70 fighters in the south in the past 48 hours, a day after confirming it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the militant group’s heir apparent leader.
Blinken, who held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his first stop, said it was time for Israel to capitalize on its military victories.
“Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success,” he told reporters as he prepared to leave for Saudi Arabia on the next stage of his regional tour. “The focus needs to be on getting the hostages home, ending this war and having a clear plan for what follows.”
Blinken’s visit to Jordan, planned for Wednesday, was postponed, Jordan’s foreign minister said, without giving a reason or rescheduled date.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Tuesday with Netanyahu as part of his 11th visit to the region since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. After Israel’s killing last week of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Blinken is trying to revive efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. Israeli military forces besieged hospitals and shelters for displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. The Israeli military levelled a building in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday.
Hamas leader Sinwar, whom Israel killed last week, was the suspected mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, when Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducting another 250, by Israeli tallies. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health authority.
Over the past month, Israel has also dramatically ramped up its war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group that had rocketed Israel in support of the Palestinians. Israel has launched a ground offensive and killed most of Hezbollah’s leadership in airstrikes that have displaced 1.2 million people.
Both sides in Gaza war holding firm
Washington views Sinwar’s death as a chance to push for peace, as it would now be easier for Netanyahu to argue that major goals have been achieved in Gaza.
Blinken said new formulations were being examined in an effort to win freedom for Israeli hostages held in Gaza and bring an end to the war.
Still, there has been no sign of a let-up in fighting. Hamas says it will not free scores of hostages it is still holding without an Israeli promise to end the war in Gaza. Israel says it will not stop fighting in Gaza until Hamas is annihilated, and in Lebanon until Hezbollah no longer poses a threat.
Diplomats say Israel is pressing its military advantage to lock in a strong position before a new U.S. administration takes office following the Nov. 5 election.
Israel’s military said its forces in southern Lebanon were continuing to conduct “limited, localized, targeted raids against Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure and operatives.”
“Over the past day, the troops eliminated approximately 70 terrorists in ground and aerial strikes,” it said.
Israel’s offensive has driven at least 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes and killed 2,530 people, including at least 63 over the past 24 hours, the Lebanese government said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the military said it had confirmed the killing of Safieddine, heir apparent to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli attack last month. The military said Safieddine was killed in a strike three weeks ago in Beirut’s southern suburbs; Israel had earlier said he had probably been killed, but had stopped short of confirming so.
There was no immediate response from Hezbollah, which Nasrallah had turned into a powerful military and political force, but now faces its most serious setbacks since it was formed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to counter an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Published at Wed, 23 Oct 2024 10:22:09 +0000