Ukrainian soldiers training in north to take out Russian drones

Ukrainian soldiers in mobile air defense units have been training in a secret location in northern Ukraine as Russia continues to barrage the country with hundreds of drone strikes.

In the last two months, Russia launched over 800 drones to bombard Ukraine, including the largest attack on Kyiv since the start of the war on Saturday, according to the Ukrainian Air Force and Defense Intelligence.

Military officials said Moscow is holding on to its stock of 870 cruise and ballistic missiles for its major attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, planning to repeat tactics from last winter.

In an undisclosed location in the country’s north, Ukrainian instructors pilot dummy drones made to imitate the Iranian-made Shahed drone Russia uses, as soldiers man decades-old machine guns and anti-aircraft guns mounted on pick-up trucks take aim at the aerial weapons, ABC News reported.

“Everything we have, every help we get, we use it to create mobile fire groups to fill every inch of space here,” Lt. Gen. Serhiy Nayev, who oversees Ukraine’s Northern border defense, told the outlet.

In one test run, soldiers fired thousands of rounds using anti-aircraft guns at a small drone, which sustained minimal damage; in a real-life fight, Ukrainian forces would have had to use costly Western air defense systems — a last-ditch option — to take out the weapon, the outlet reported.

Nayev said that despite training hundreds of mobile air defense teams to prepare for Russia’s aerial onslaught, technology is “critical” for Ukraine’s defenses.

“The target for which, according to the old Soviet-style technologies, it was necessary to spend 100 shells — with the help of Western technologies, much less is needed, and it is measured in numbers up to 10, so the technology always outweighs the number,” Nayev told ABC News.