Irishman’s Ukrainian parents hid his passport to stop him joining defence of Kyiv at age 17
'Irlandets' a Dublin-born drone pilot in the Ukrainian army, operates a drone against Russia from a bunker near the front line as his Ukrainian squad mate 'Ken' monitors data on a laptop. Photograph courtesy of IrlandetsTop strike drone pilots have been called the snipers of modern warfare, and Ukraine’s army has one who goes by the call sign “Irlandets” – “Irishman” in Ukrainian.
“I was 17 when everything kicked off,” he says of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, when it poured troops, armour, missile systems, fighter jets and helicopters over the border in a bid to occupy its pro-western neighbour. “I went to a friend’s place to drop off some bags,” he says. “I thought I had my passport with me, but when I came home and started doing my final checklist it was like, hold up, my passport – where’s it gone?”“When I was checking my equipment, a friend of my parents came over. She lives about 50km away and I think they gave her my passport. They came up with a last-minute grandmaster plan. While I was playing chequers, they were playing chess.
Irlandets – who does not want his name to be published, for security reasons and in line with military policy – expected to be in the infantry and was bracing himself for trench warfare. “We kept flying into Bakhmut because FPV squads loved to stand in the big buildings on the outskirts and you could fly nicely into their windows. Lots of them also came to live in apartment blocks there,” he adds. “My first hit was when a bunch of Russian soldiers piled up in that building and I hit it directly.”
He has destroyed or damaged Russian armoured personnel carriers, artillery pieces, trucks carrying ammunition and other enemy equipment, but what he calls the “cherry on top” was a T-90 tank – a multimillion-euro weapon blown up by a couple of FPVs costing only a few hundred euro each. Reconnaissance operations are now handled largely by surveillance drones rather than small squads of highly trained soldiers, and snipers are no longer the ultimate long-range precision killers – FPV pilots can do the same job from the relative safety of a bunker up to 10km from the target.
‘With artillery, you might need a few shots to get the range right, but with first-person-view drones you can do one flight and hit your target’ On a recent day off from frontline duties, he is relaxed and still feeling the benefit of a recent visit home.
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