Thread by @JPLindsley

1/ 🧵 Russians are coming at Ukrainians with WWII motorcycles, golf carts, AND with fiber optic drones.

Ukrainian defender Dimko Zhluktenko @dim0kq shares the shocking reality from the bizarre frontline.

Some wild stuff in here 🧵⤵️

2/ Dimko flies reconnaissance drones deep into occupied territory while living in underground bunkers 10-15km from the front, in the kill zone. He shared raw and illuminating stories with Jonathan Fink in Oxford, UK, on the @CurtainSilicon podcast ⤵️

3/ "Yesterday I was sitting at a position and I was looking at a live stream of another unit.

"They were filming how Russians, 20 of them were just advancing through the field about five kilometers away from the frontline... all of them by the end of that field were destroyed" ⤵️

4/ The mathematics of Russian assaults are horrifying:

"Let's say you have a hundred guys doing the assault in a day, and out of them 80 will be killed just by trying to get to that little village"

"This is the tactics that they are using" ⤵️

5/ "I completely understand that they do not regard human life as anything precious, but at the same time it's working," Dimko says. "It's working, and we are seeing this by the gains that they have"

The worry: when Ukrainian defenders become too few to hold. ⤵️

6/ On vehicles at the front: "buggies, golf carts, motorcycles, you know that motorcycles from the World War II where you have a body sitting right next to you... We've seen that as well. I mean crazy. It's crazy in here"

No tanks within 10km anymore. Drones everywhere.⤵️

7/ The village combat is apocalyptic:

"in one house there are Ukrainian forces in another house, there are Russian forces like the right next house"

"they destroyed the house with the Russian guys, so all of them were killed... buried under rubble" ⤵️

8/ "But just imagine that this is one less house in that village that you could use for defending that village and step by step house by house will be destroying any potential fortifications"

The brutal math of territorial defense. ⤵️

9/ On innovation:

"If you have any great ideas, you just pitch the idea, get some funding, start building the prototype and start to testing with the military...

In Ukraine, I think this is literally the Silicon Valley of defense tech at the moment" ⤵️

10/ But there's a dark irony:

"I'm yet to see anyone here on the battlefield who gives a damn" about Chinese components.

"I am literally at the moment talking to you from Starlink and it is connected to Chinese hardware, both of which I despise"

but what can you do? ⤵️

11/ The danger is constant:

"Almost any field that we use for our landing procedures, they're filled with optic fiber, meaning that tons of Russian optic fiber drones have been flying in the area looking for targets"

Drones with fiber optic cables can't be jammed. ⤵️

12/ Western arrogance:

"one country ... sent us about 1,000 reconnaissance drones that are absolutely unusable in the conditions of our warfare"

"they profoundly rejected the idea that it's better to finance Ukrainian drones that are specifically made for this theater" ⤵️

13/ Ukrainians have serious KPIs:

"Each and every flight that we do, we have to submit some data, specifically what type of drone we use and then what kind of result that we bring with that flight"

"It's like we're looking at, I dunno, some data startup or something" 🤣🫡⤵️

14/ A stark reality check:

"I think most of the Ukrainians are now too tired even to think about [geopolitics] ...

"We have, I think in some ways many Ukrainians agreed that it's only us in this, and really the survival of our nation depends on us" ⤵️

15/ Despite everything, there's still hope:

"I'm very happy that there are still people who actually support Ukraine and its fight for freedom, for democracy, for our future, and most importantly ... for our families, for our homes.

"That is great, and that gives me hope" ⤵️

16/ If moved by Dimko's story, support his unit through @Dzygaspaw, the mil-tech charity run by his wife Alona.

As Jonathan Fink of the Silicon Curtain notes:

"They've always got campaigns running and they have an extraordinary level of transparency so that you'll know that every pound, dollar, yen, whatever you give, actually goes to make a tremendous difference"

Watch the full interview here: youtube.com/watch?v=5OqTe-…