Games

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.04-192130/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/04/04/in-ukraine-gamers-make-the-best-drone-pilots_6739849_4.html

Now more deadly than any other weapon, drones have changed the face of the fighting between Kyiv and Moscow. Pending a solution to the conflict, Ukraine is focusing on training and recruiting the people who make the best pilots: gamers.

All you could see were their black or khaki caps, five heads bent in a semicircle, 10 eyes glued to a console. If it weren't for the fatigues, you'd think it was a gaming convention. But big insects were buzzing in the air, and the 92nd Assault Brigade was actually training in drone warfare in a snow-covered field near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. "Of course we all play video games," smiled commanding officer Nikola, his cheeks reddened by the cold under a The North Face beanie. "Those who have had practice are definitely more proficient in piloting the drones."

"The face of war has changed. We are the 'new wave,'" said one of the supervisors of a drone manufacturing workshop hidden in the basement of an old Soviet building in Kharkiv. "The infantrymen of the trenches can do nothing nowadays without the new strategic battalions which, since 2023, have upended combat," he continued under a poster of a scantily clad woman wearing biker boots, a bra, and holding a Kalashnikov. Drones are now responsible for 70% of deaths among combatants, both Russian and Ukrainian, and their use has made the third year of the war deadlier than the first two combined.