Cosmos floated his quadcopter over the ruined warehouse, guiding it through a corner of the roof where shattered metal sheets had collapsed to form a hole.
The drone pilot’s unit, the Wild Division, suspected that the building was a logistics hub for Russian soldiers, roughly 15 km, or about 9 miles, from the line of contact in southern Ukraine. These hidden locations often held ordnance or fuel stockpiles, and Cosmos’ fiber-optic drone was armed with explosives to destroy them.
Yet inside, the drone rotated its camera to reveal what looked more like a farmer’s garage: Four civilian cars, a pair of motorcycles, and two bridled horses.
“We had not expected to see this. It was unusual,” Cosmos told Business Insider, speaking on condition that he be identified only by his call sign.
“We were expecting to find some armored vehicles,” he added.
Video of the discovery went viral last week in Ukraine, as the war has increasingly seen Russian soldiers using unconventional transport tools, such as pack animals and bicycles, to conduct assaults or logistics missions. Cosmos said his drone mission was conducted in early February.
The smaller profile of a horse or civilian car might be harder for a drone to spot, though Russia’s repeated use of them has also raised questions about the viability of its tactics and whether it’s been producing enough military equipment to sustain its invasion.
Cosmos’ squad mates and officers at the Wild Division, a first-person-view drone company in the 82nd Air Assault Brigade, had seen clips of Russian soldiers riding on horses to attack Ukrainian positions before.
One famous example they remember was in Zaporizhzhia, when a Ukrainian drone crew attacked Russian infantry crossing the front lines on horseback last month.
Cosmos, who’s been piloting drones for a year, said it was the first time he’d personally seen the animals on the front lines.
He flew his explosive-laden drone straight into the back of one of the cars, and said his crew later struck several other vehicles inside. When Russian troops moved their transport assets, the Wild Division found the next warehouse and attacked that one, too, Cosmos said.
“The enemy usually lives in hiding close to these places,” Cosmos said of the warehouse. “It’s common for us to check all targets. Sometimes we can see the enemy infantry, or you can see their vehicles.”
Russia calculates war differently
The Wild Division declined to say where exactly the warehouse was located, but its brigade is generally deployed in the Donbas.
The commander of Cosmos’ battalion told Business Insider that the discovery of the horses surprised him, too.
“I thought it had been a location for transport vehicles, sort of a transfer hub,” said the major, whose call sign is Fizruk.
Fizruk said the appearance of horses and cars in his area of the front line could be a sign that Russian forces are running low on standard resources, but also reflects Moscow’s attritional nature of fighting.
The cars discovered by Cosmos appear to be Nivas, inexpensive civilian off-road vehicles from the Russian Lada car brand.
“They treat these like they will be losses anyway, that they will be destroyed anyway,” he said. “Look, a Niva costs, let’s say, $2,000. A Hummer, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine uses in many places, costs $20,000, maybe more.”
“Since they lose their equipment in assaults, from that point of view, why pay $20,000 for one vehicle if you can buy 10 Nivas for $20,000?” Fizruk added.
The Kremlin is known to pressure the front line with repeated ground assaults, sending small groups of infantry to approach Ukrainian positions on foot or in cheap vehicles. The strategy has been costly, with NATO now saying that up to 25,000 Russian troops are dying each month.
Sustaining that style of war has pushed Moscow to informal means of recruitment and weapons procurement, including hiring troops from overseas and receiving ammunition from North Korea.
