A Ukrainian teenager is being hailed as a hero after he used a toy drone to spot an advancing column of Russian soldiers headed towards capital Kyiv and alerted the military.
Andrii Pokrasa, the 15-year-old skateboarder, spotted the light of Russian military vehicles with his toy drone device.
He had been called upon by the Ukrainian military to help due to his experience with such devices, reported the Telegraph.
“He was the only one who was experienced with drones in that region,” Yurii Kasjanov, the commander of the armed forces’ unmanned reconnaissance section, was quoted as saying.
“He’s a real hero, a hero of Ukraine.”
Pokrasa said that he had been approached by the military to help obtain the GPS coordinates of the approaching Russian convoy.
“They provided us information where approximately the Russian column could be. Our goal was to find the exact coordinates and provide the coordinates to the soldiers,” he said to Global News.
“It was one of the biggest columns that was moving on the Zhytomyr road and we managed to find it because one of the trucks turned on its lights for a long time.”
He said that the moment when he spotted the convoy was “very, very scary.”
However, he was determined to not allow the Russian convoy to approach his town.
“I gave them the coordinates and photos, and after that they targeted the location,” he said. “And I needed to coordinate more specifically where they should shell with artillery.”
The information that Pokrasa found were then sent to a territorial defence unit via social media, who were then able to stop the approaching Russians near Berezivka, around 40km west of Kyiv.
Taras Troiak, a former drone retailer who heads the Federation of Drone Owners of Ukraine, told Global News that consumer drones have been a gamechanger for the war as the Russians have been left with no place to hide.
“It’s a game-changer for the war,” he was quoted as saying.
“If we didn’t have such operators and drones who can help the Ukrainian army, I think Kyiv already could be occupied by Russian forces.”
Ukrainian said on Wednesday that forces were successfully holding out against Russian assault in Sievierodonetsk, while Russian troops were bringing in new resources towards Donbas in an intense battle for control of the eastern region.
