The Ukrainian military is stepping up its campaign to destroy vehicles supplying Russian forces along crucial roads in occupied Ukraine using new AI drone technology, experts say.
BBC Verify has confirmed footage of at least 14 incidents published in the past week of vehicles carrying food, fuel and ammunition being targeted along critical routes connecting Russia to Crimea and other occupied territories in southern Ukraine.
Ukraine is starting to regain more ground than it is losing for the first time since 2023, analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicates. After more than four years of war and increased Russian occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine, neither side has gained any significant ground in recent months.
Experts say recent drone technology advancements, including the AI-enabled Hornet system, have allowed Ukraine to attack Russian targets travelling to the front lines at greater distances and with increased accuracy.
Footage analysed by BBC Verify and online by GeoConfirmed open source analysts shows burned-out shells of container lorries and other military vehicles at multiple locations along a key route through southern Ukraine.
At least 10 incidents were recorded between Russia’s border and the occupied city of Mariupol, with one strike recorded south-west of the city of Melitopol. The critical route is used by the Russian military to supply their forces on the front line and in Crimea.
Clément Molin, an analyst at think tank Atum Mundi, told BBC Verify he had confirmed the destruction of 150 vehicles more than 20km (12 miles) from the front line, although he said this likely accounted for about half of all incidents.
The strikes mean Russia has been forced to shorten convoys on supply routes as a “quick coping mechanism to reduce potential damage”, Cristian Vlas at conflict monitoring group Acled told BBC Verify.
He suggested Ukraine’s main objective was not only to strike the assets “important to Russia’s image of grand power”, but to disrupt key logistical convoys, command posts, and communication towers. These “feed, fuel, and inform Russian units at the front line and form the basis for capacity to fight in the battlefield and launch long-range drone and missile strikes from occupied territories”.
Robert Tollast, land warfare expert at the Royal United Service Institute, told BBC Verify that some brigades were estimated to need up to 1,000 tonnes of fuel, food, ammunition and other key supplies every day. He said Ukraine had previously used a long-range strike campaign against Russian air defence units, but the new drone strike ranges “are something else”.
“If you are cutting resupply, for example ammunition trucks 100km or more from the front using small drones, and then longer-range drones are going after larger logistical sites, this is a very serious problem for the Russians,” he said.
Ukraine’s Hornet drones are equipped with an AI-targeting system which has been trained on thousands of hours of videos of Russian military targets gathered over the last four years, Nick Brown, a weapons expert from defence intelligence company Janes, told BBC Verify. They can also access the Starlink satellite network to connect to operators over longer distances, a system that is also more resistant to jamming by Russian forces.
“Ukraine can launch hundreds of these loitering munitions towards a rough target area over 100 miles away and then use AI to detail them on to Russian military targets as they find them,” he said.
Department of DefenseUkraine’s innovative use of technology means the war is not a stalemate, according to George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), and Kyiv is using mechanised equipment in tactical manoeuvres that were impossible 12 months ago.
“Russia’s ability to conduct infiltration missions will likely continue to degrade as Ukraine’s intermediate-range strike campaign pushes Russia’s logistics and forward operating bases further away from the front lines, reducing resourcing to sustain infantry tasked with infiltration missions,” he said.
One of Ukraine’s specialist drone units, the 412th Nemesis Brigade, said this week that Russian commanders had limited the movement of heavy equipment in southern Ukraine and were attempting to evade drones by using fields and dirt roads.
The Russian-appointed leader of the occupied areas in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, has also ordered restrictions on civilian traffic along the route.
Barros said Ukraine’s “drone superiority” had even neutralised Russia’s attempts to gain an advantage by moving “overwhelming numbers” of troops to the front line, but added that the advantage may be shortlived.
“Russia will very likely eventually develop countermeasures so Ukraine’s international partners have a rare and temporary opportunity to exploit favourable battlefield dynamics while Ukraine has the upper hand.”
Additional reporting by Kayleen Devlin, Joshua Cheetham and Sherie Ryder, graphics by Tom Shiel.
