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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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New footage appears to show a successful Ukrainian drone strike on Russian front-line positions as both Moscow and Kyiv ramp up their first-person-view drone development.
In a video posted to social media on Monday by Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko, who runs fundraisers for Ukraine's drone stockpiles and publishes combat footage, several clips are spliced together and appear to show a Ukrainian first-person-view, or FPV, drone strike on a Russian hideout.
The footage seems to show at least one Ukrainian kamikaze drone target a ruined structure where Russian soldiers were sheltering before it explodes, demolishing the remains of the building. A separate airborne vehicle appears to have captured the moment of impact.
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The strike is attributed to the 80th Brigade of Ukraine's airborne forces, but Sternenko did not specify when, nor where, it was filmed. The clip sparked speculation online that the drone in the video was a larger, more destructive FPV model than those Ukraine has been routinely using.
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Newsweek could not independently verify the footage, and has reached out to the Ukrainian military for comment via email.
FPV drones quickly became almost emblematic of Ukraine's efforts with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They can be used to record dramatic battlefield footage where the drone careens towards Russian vehicles before exploding, or deployed as reconnaissance tools to guide artillery strikes.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have used FPV drones extensively in front-line hot spots, including in and around Avdiivka, since Russia launched its offensive on the embattled Donetsk town in early October 2023.
In mid-December, a Ukrainian official said Russia was winning the war in terms of FPV numbers in certain areas. Ukraine has just one drone to between five and seven Russian FPV drones in key battleground sectors of eastern and southern Ukraine, said Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of Ukraine's Achilles drone company, which is within the country's 92nd Assault Brigade.
Ukraine dominated FPV manufacturing earlier this year, but Russia has since expanded its own programs and sent large numbers of the unmanned vehicles to the front lines, according to Samuel Bendett of the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. think tank.
"Multiple Russian volunteer, state and affiliated manufacturing efforts have significantly ramped up FPV development and shipped large quantities to the front," he previously told Newsweek. "It's highly likely that these efforts combined are providing the Russian military with tens of thousands of FPVs a month."
But Ukraine has been pouring funds into buying and modifying FPV drones, launching several fundraisers to purchase thousands of them last year.
"It's hard to compete with Russia on quantity," Mykhailo Fedorov, Kyiv's minister of digital transformation, who is at the helm of the drone efforts against Moscow, told Newsweek in early December. "FPV drones are indeed a tech revolution, even though the tech itself is quite easy."
They have become "very efficient" tools for Ukraine, and "work sometimes even more efficiently than artillery," he said.
"Ukraine has scaled up drone production, including FPV drones, and is working with all sides to promptly ramp up co-production further," Kyiv's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on January 11.
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