BBC News:
For weeks Ukraine’s armed forces have been talking of launching a counter-offensive in the south, and now a senior military officer has told the BBC they aim to recapture the city of Kherson within weeks. Instead of a major full-scale attack, they are expected to adopt a different strategy, with a role for small drone units.
His eyes glued to a monitor, a member of Ukraine’s special operation forces is operating a drone flying over Russian positions when he spots an armoured vehicle hidden in trenches: “Fire when you’re ready,” he says in a voice message to an artillery unit.
Russian lines are just 3km (1.9 miles) away and this soldier has to hide his identity: his call-sign is Maverick, from the movie Top Gun.
The task for Maverick and his team is to identify potential targets and pass on their coordinates. Then they watch and direct fire.
Big guns make a big difference in this conflict.
“This is a war of artillery, high-tech weapons and minds. The soldier still plays an important role but success is mostly dependent on rockets, artillery and air strikes,” says Maj Gen Dmytro Marchenko, who successfully organised the defence of the southern city of Mykolaiv from Russian attack last spring. It is not like World War Two, when one big army attacked another, he argues.
