Meet the Ukrainian volunteers shooting down Russian drones

DW (English)

Russia's military launches a steady stream of drones and missiles at Ukraine, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds. It's often up to volunteers to try and keep the country's skies safe — ordinary citizens who have only old weapons at their disposal. DW traveled to the town of Pereyaslav to meet one of the volunteer teams.

Transcript

00:00Are you ready?

00:03My dinner is too.

00:05We've been waiting for this.

00:06Let's go.

00:08They've just received the alert.

00:12Russian drones are incoming.

00:16Now every second counts.

00:18We have arrived at a position.

00:21We are ready to work.

00:24If they don't shoot them down, the Shahed drones could hit residential buildings and

00:28kill civilians.

00:31The closest is 100 plus kilometers from us.

00:34At first, Shahed didn't have cameras.

00:36Right now, some of them do.

00:37And so we have to be careful as to they can target us.

00:43By night, she's part of a team hunting drones.

00:46By day, she's in her university dorm pursuing a master's in IT.

00:51She never imagined her life would take this turn.

00:54At the beginning, we were like in shock, all of us,

00:58because we didn't realize or maybe we didn't want to believe that the war will begin in

01:05such a scale.

01:09It was immediately clear to her, she had to act.

01:11You can't just sit here and say, I can't influence the situation.

01:19That's not right.

01:20You can.

01:21You can.

01:22Everyone can.

01:23Just days after the full-scale invasion began, she joined a volunteer air defense unit.

01:29Sofia became Mavka, her call sign, named after a mythical spirit from Ukrainian folklore.

01:36Asimut-100, almost at the first hour.

01:39I found it.

01:40Fire!

01:41Fire!

01:42Their mission isn't easy.

01:48Some of the weapons they use, like this Maxim machine gun invented 140 years ago, are far

01:54less accurate than modern systems, of which they have a limited number.

01:58It can be changed.

02:00Proudly, they show me how they recently shot down a drone.

02:05Our commanders congratulate us.

02:11And then it's a moment of glory, a little bit of a moment of glory.

02:17Over a year ago, Sofia was promoted to chief of staff of her entire formation.

02:23At the beginning, I didn't believe in myself as much, and I thought that no one would put

02:29a woman to such a position, because mostly it's men, and probably they think that they

02:35can do more, but in real life, not always.

02:43Their outpost in Pereyaslav sits along a major drone flight path to Kyiv, just a hundred kilometers

02:49away.

02:50It's coming close to Kyiv region, so be here, air alert.

02:56They are ready.

02:57But then…

02:58Two Ukrainian helicopters appear, with priority to shoot down the drone.

03:04Sofia's unit gets a no-fire order to avoid hitting them.

03:08All they can do now is wait.

03:11They admit their machine guns sometimes feel outdated.

03:15So they're hoping for stronger support from other countries.

03:18We have to be powerful to win.

03:22And to be powerful, we need more of everything.

03:26More rockets, more weapons.

03:28Sometimes we think that we are alone, that everybody is just looking and doing nothing.

03:34It doesn't mean that they do nothing, but we just feel so.

03:39Even though they sometimes feel overlooked, these volunteers say they'll keep doing their

03:44hard to help save lives.

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