The Kramatorsk Diaries part 34

Then cometh the autumn...

Paul Conroy – Kramatorsk 25/10/25

To the sound of distant explosions — sharp, percussive edges dulled by distance — autumn arrives stealthily, bearing its twin gifts of hope and horror.

There’s a word for this season: Rasputitsa — the mud time. Across the black earth of Donbas, fertile soil turns to sludge, swallowing boots, tracks, and momentum alike. For the Russians, it’s a dead halt; armour sinks, supply lines rot, and the front congeals in the mire. For Ukrainians dug into their trenches, it’s a slow descent into misery — wet uniforms, damp bread, the constant suck of mud underfoot.

Yet even this grim reprieve carries a fragile promise: for a few brief months, before the frost hardens the ground and the tanks start to roll again, the lines will hold.

The fragile promise of the Rasputitsa dissolves when I look out the window. A month ago, the boulevards were veiled in lush, green foliage. Now, the streets lie beneath a carpet of damp, golden leaves. Above them, the trees stand stripped bare — skeletal silhouettes against a washed-out sky.

Nature’s camouflage is gone. Every branch, every open space is exposed. And in that nakedness lies the warning: more death from above.

The war in Ukraine has changed beyond recognition. Three years ago, in the battles for Bakhmut and Soledar, the only thing likely to fall on my head was artillery — crude, deafening, indiscriminate.

Now, in Kramatorsk, you don’t look for a parking space — there are hardly any cars left. You look for a tree. A sliver of shade. A canopy to break the line of sight from above.

But the trees are bare now, their cover stripped away. The city stands exposed — and so do we.

Now, war hums. It circles. It sees.

Drones — silent, patient, precise — hang in the air like sharp-eyed hawks. Each carries the power to kill with surgical intent. The possibility of a single, targeted strike haunts every minute of every day. The front no longer ends at the trenches; it stretches to every open window, every rooftop, every patch of sky.

Two days ago, while editing a film in my apartment, I heard a blast. Nothing unusual. I didn’t look up.

Half an hour later, my phone began to vibrate. I ignored it at first, but it wouldn’t stop — a small, insistent tremor on the desk. I gave in and checked the messages.

Two Ukrainian journalists, Olena Huberanova and Yevhen Karmazin, had been killed. A Russian Lancet loitering drone found their car — a direct, targeted strike at a gas station barely five hundred metres from my window.

The blast I’d dismissed as routine had taken them.

Earlier this week, I spent time with the 1st Presidential Brigade — KONDORS — a drone-warfare unit holding the Kupiansk front against Russian assault teams. If that line breaks, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk risk encirclement.

Their commander, Lt Col “Djakonda,” is a calm, smiling man in his early thirties. When I last met him, his requests were simple — drone jammers to knock enemy drones from the sky. Seven months on, his list has narrowed to one thing: pump-action shotguns, the only defence against un-jammable fibre-optic drones.

This is modern war: clever machines and grim improvisation. The technology changes the rules; the people invent new ones on the fly.

On my previous visit, we drove hell-for-leather to a forward position a few miles from the Russian lines. Full body armour, drone jammers thrumming, the car taking ruts and swallowing dust. A trench, then a low concrete bunker spattered with mud — the reconnaissance team waiting inside, faces lit blue by monitors showing aerial footage of the enemy.

Djakonda smiled, as if remembering another war. “It’s not like that now. The guys walk it all — ammo, batteries, food, diesel. We only use the UGV for heavy stuff. Send a vehicle and it’s destroyed. We lost two men and seven vehicles last month.” His smile went thin at the memory.

We drive a few miles to the UGV unit headquarters. In a dim workshop, soldiers fit batteries into a tracked unmanned ground vehicle — a squat workhorse capable of hauling 300 kilos over thirty kilometres. It can also evacuate the wounded or lay anti-tank mines, the unit commander says, matter-of-factly.

Upstairs, the command centre hums. Two young men, gaming controllers in hand, sit before laptops. On the screens, a UGV crawls along rough, potholed tracks deep in the forest near the Russian lines — part video game, part lifeline.

Djakonda leads me to his “mini production facility,” smiling that dry smile. Inside, young men in fatigues and T-shirts quietly assemble drone-dropped antipersonnel mines — hands quick, workbench neat. Everything is Ukrainian-designed, 3D-printed, made from parts bought in regular shops. “All except the C-4 explosive,” he says, eyes twinkling. The air smells faintly of hot plastic and solder; a transistor radio crackles out Ukrainian techno.

On the drive back to Kramatorsk, I think about how fast everything is changing — faster than any war I’ve known. Djakonda’s words stay with me.

“It takes about three weeks for a new idea to change everything,” he said. “Better batteries, longer cables — you never know what’s coming next. Then a few more weeks to adapt. And then it all changes again.”

He paused, eyes on the horizon.
“I don’t know where we’ll be in a year. It’s science fiction.”

On the nerve-jangling drive home, the road stretches ahead, cracked and empty, the late light sliding over fields littered with mines. Somewhere in that distance, in a dimly lit workshop, with young men listening to awful music, the next version of the war is already being built.

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