In the drone-dominated no-man's-land of Ukraine's front lines, survival often comes down to luck and adaptation. Ukrainian infantryman Aleksandr's ordeal, detailed in CJ Chivers' piece for the New York Times, began in the pitch-black hours one night in August, when a Russian drone targeted him and his patrol. A blast left his leg shattered, but the drone moved on, and Aleksandr, 40, found himself alone, wounded, and exposed on open ground. He applied a tourniquet, discarded anything that might slow him down, and began the agonizing crawl back toward a distant woodlot he and his fellow soldiers had come from, knowing that daylight would only spur to action a "vicious new normal" in Russia's war in Ukraine—"small aerial attack drones, startlingly effective tools for finding and killing those caught" between their own front lines and those of the enemy.
Aleksandr's crawl was punctuated by the constant threat of drone surveillance and attack, with each whine in the air forcing him to hide under a poncho and hope for the best. Despite his severe dehydration and blood loss, Aleksandr pressed on, driven by thoughts of his family and survival. His eventual rescue was aided by Ukrainian drone pilots who monitored his progress and used a quadcopter to relay instructions to him. After a harrowing encounter in which a Russian drone nearly finished the job, the Ukrainian pilots intervened, allowing Aleksandr to reach cover. He was retrieved by fellow soldiers and sheltered in a bunker until conditions allowed for his evacuation to Kharkiv, where, finally, he was able to see his mother. "I promised you I would remain alive," he told her, embracing her at last. "And I did." More here on his ordeal.