Slovyansk drone unit holds a fortress city Russia wants Ukraine to surrender
BBC reporters entered the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk under Russian drone, missile and glide-bomb fire with escorts from a specialist drone unit nicknamed Peaky Blinders, whose camouflaged flat-cap emblem echoes the BBC drama. Twenty-one-year-old Tetiana, who gave up hopes of becoming an opera singer, and colleague Yasha lead them in: she tracks air threats on her phone while he watches the sky and carries a shotgun as a last resort against drones. Rain and cloud are “good” weather because they hinder drones, but the danger remains. Walking is safer than driving; vehicles are hidden under trees. Streets are littered with cars wrecked by first-person-view drones, and anti-drone netting over roads is no guarantee.
Slovyansk is one of four Donetsk “fortress belt” cities Kyiv still holds. Moscow wants them ceded in talks among Ukraine, Russia and the United States that have resumed in Abu Dhabi after a nine-month pause. Ukrainians say surrender would ease a further Russian push west, including toward Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to give up the territory; the White House has sounded positive about the talks. Russia already holds nearly 90 percent of the Donbas (Luhansk and Donetsk), though its advances this year have almost stalled. October was the deadliest month for Russian troops since the full-scale invasion, with more than 54,000 killed or injured, according to Ukraine’s general staff. The same pattern seen in Pokrovsk and Bakhmut—intimidation, flight, rubble, then Russian control—is unfolding here.
The city once had more than 200,000 residents; fewer than 10 percent remain. A school was recently destroyed by glide bombs; shops are boarded up. Coffee-shop worker Iryna, born in Slovyansk and already without her house, says she will not leave. Inga, 53, stays because she has nowhere to go.
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