Et histoire de se mettre en joie, un fascinant et effroyable article du NYT sur l’usage massif des drones sur le front Ukrainien.
Everyone at the front knew the sound of drones. Even soldiers who had yet to see firsthand the hunter-quadcopter’s grisly effects had witnessed onscreen an uncountable number of peers die from the attacks, brought to them by the messaging app Telegram. War-related Telegram accounts posted constantly updated streams of short videos showing the fates of soldiers chased by drones. The accounts accumulated together as a sort of DeathTube, an expanding montage of cornered men frantically doing whatever they could to survive, only to die nonetheless, each spending his last seconds alive as an unwilling extra in the public visual chronicle of the rise of homicidal flying machines.
The Russian Army, in the eyes of Ukrainian fighters, is but a horde. Its dehumanization is baked into frontline attitudes and speech. Many Ukrainians refer to their foes with slurs for residents of Moscow or for gay men, and as bitches, whores or “businessmen,” a jab at recruits who accept cash bonuses for volunteering to fight in Ukraine. Often they call them orcs. But the cornered Russian soldiers were men, and their will to live was strong. When quadcopters rushed in, they sought escape. Some ran, some crawled, some leaped from the beds of speeding trucks. Occasionally one scurried in circles around a disabled vehicle, a utility pole or the trunk of a tree. Others hid in bushes or under blankets they believed cloaked them from the digital eyes flying around or above.
Some fighters, of course, fight. These Russians squared up. They fired Kalashnikovs or shotguns at incoming quadcopters, threw their own helmets or rifles into the path of their descending tormentors or swung long sticks, trying to knock 21st-century drones to dirt with weapons from eons ago. When all other defenses failed, the instant before incoming warheads impacted torsos and limbs, a few swatted or kicked at the quadcopters with bare hands or booted feet, lashing out reflexively at the candid cameras sent to kill them. Then they absorbed shrapnel and blast. The explosions claimed many victims instantly. Others were thrown down and expired slowly, gasping or twisting or rolling in pain, sometimes with uniforms aflame, while observation drones collected footage of their agonies. Occasionally, wounded Russian survivors ended their own lives with hand grenades or by shooting themselves with rifles. Some played dead and ended up that way.
Vivement dites donc !
