After Zelenskyy, Robert Brovdi is Moscow’s top assassination target owing to his long-range attacks deep within Russia
Vladimir Putin has told Russians that victory againstUkraineis inevitable. But on Saturday no tanks or missiles will rumble over the cobbles of Moscow’s Red Square. For the first time in almost 20 years the annual celebration of the allies’ victory over Nazi Germany will take place without military hardware. The reason: the Kremlin is afraid of a Ukrainian attack.
The man who has arguably done more to spook the Putin regime this weekend than anyone else isRobert Brovdi, the head of a Ukrainian military drone unit,Madyar’s Birds, named after his call sign. In recent months it has carried out a series of long-range strikes against targets deep within Russia, including ports, oil refineries and missile factories.
Brovdi acknowledges that a “symbolic” attack on Red Square would generate headlines around the world but says Ukraine will probably deliver a “slap in the face” where Russia’s air defences are weaker. “Why waste drones on the ‘great wall’,” he said, referring to the enhanced security around Moscow. “If you hit the energy sector or military that’s the best strike, on the periphery.”
Crippling attacks from Brovdi’s elite 414th brigade have presented a huge challenge to the Kremlin’s war. The unit’s long-range drones have been knocking out enemy air defence systems more quickly than Moscow can rebuild them and, suddenly, everywhere within a 1,250 mile (2,000km) radius of Brovdi’s bunker looks vulnerable, including Putin’s palaces.
Ukrainian drones last month hit the Black Sea oil terminal at Tuapsefour times in two weeks. “Practically everything there has burned,” Brovdi says. There weresimilar hitson the Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga. Drones evenflew to the Urals, hitting an oil refinery in Perm andfighter jets in Chelyabinsk, 1,050 miles from the frontline.
Smouldering infrastructure and dark oil-drenched clouds point the way to a Ukrainian victory, Brovdi suggests, by crashing Russia’s economy so it can no longer fund its costly war. Putin spends 40% of his $530bn annual budget on the military and Brovdi estimates that 100m tonnes of Russian oil, worth $100bn (£73.4bn), is exported each year from ports within range of his drones.
Brovdi also points to the Russian military’s casualties from drones; Ukraine claims that for the fifth month in a row the Kremlin has lost more soldiers than it can recruit, putting deaths at 30,000 to 34,000 a month. “This affects the combat capability of the Russian army, reducing its offensive potential. That is a fact,” he says.
Meeting Brovdi, a former grain trader who last year became head of Ukraine’s newly formed Unmanned Systems Forces, involves elaborate security protocols and a mystery ride in a car with blacked-out windows. After Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he is Russia’s top assassination target. His operations centre is deep underground. A corridor lined with sleeping pods leads to a room filled with computer screens and live video feeds.
Drones hang from the ceiling. There is a library, a painting of a Ukrainian flag by the artistAnatolii Kryvolap, and contemporary sculpture. Video loops show the final moments of Russian soldiers and the grisly aftermath of explosions. Each death is filmed and verified, some of which are compiled into a reel for social media. (The clips, which might strike some as distasteful, are popular online and humiliating for Russia’s military.) An electronic table itemises enemy losses – personnel, armoured vehicles, radar systems – in real time.
Source: Drudge Report
