He looked up at the sky and thought the drone might be there to finish him off. But instead, it saved him.
Serhiy had been separated from his Ukrainian unit and lay with a wound in his left leg and a hole in his chest, one of many casualties sustained by Ukraine in its tough assault in the south against Russian fortifications. Drone footage shows him prostrate in the dirt, rolling in pain, and looking up as he heard the tiny machine’s buzz.
“I was ready to fight for my life and I did – even lying there under the blazing sun,” he told CNN. “I realized I was too close to the Russians, and you even start to look at your gun in a different way,” he said, suggesting he feared capture. CNN spoke to Serhiy from his hospital bed, and is not using his surname for his safety.
But the drone, originally tasked with frontline surveillance, had spotted him — just a speck of white in the green fields and blackened craters. Its operators moved quickly to save him, bringing the drone back and attaching water, medicine and even a note on how to use it. Images obtained by CNN show its takeoff and arrival above Serhiy.
Drones — Russian ones — have been a constant threat on the frontlines, and so the Ukrainian UAV’s arrival was at first a cause for panic. “All the time I was crawling a drone was always hovering above,” said Serhiy. “We didn’t realize if it was friend or foe, it was a lottery.”
Yet after the bag of medicine and bottle fell, the drone footage shows Serhiy’s relieved reaction. He gestures a thumbs-up to the operators. The medicine gave him enough of a boost to enable him to crawl backward to safety. Even from high above, the footage shows the pain on his face that he had to overcome to make it.
“The combat medics who gave me first aid when they found me, were very surprised I survived for two days with a pierced lung,” he said. Serhiy said the experience had led him to reevaluate his life and priorities, and that he would return to the military if needed.
Eugene, the drone operator from the 15th National Guard, told CNN they did not want to leave anyone behind on the front lines. “Every life is important to us,” he said. “I could not live with myself if we just left someone in the field.”
Ukrainian troops discover Russian commander: Perhaps only several miles away, during the same southern counteroffensive, a different fate unfolded for a Russian commander and his unit. Footage supplied by the Ukrainian 15th National Guard shows the ferocious assault their forces unleashed on a position somewhere to the south of Orikhiv. The attack forced the Russian unit of about a dozen men to withdraw but without their commander, who was injured by an artillery strike.
Hours later, Ukrainian troops entered the trench the Russians had abandoned and found the commander, alive but wounded in the body and face. CNN is not naming the Russian unit or the commander for their safety.
Technik, from the 15th National Guard, formed part of the assault, and described finding the commander. “We said don’t try anything or you will die. And he asked us to shoot him. And we offered him a chance to do it himself. He said he could not do it.”
Technik said the units are ordered to save Russian prisoners so they can be exchanged for captured Ukrainians. “He’s an enemy, and I had no particular desire to save him. But orders are orders. And they have our guys and we can swap prisoners.”
Russia’s account of commander’s fate: Yet accounts of the commander’s fate told a different story back in Russia. There, according to media reports CNN has seen, he was declared dead and awarded a posthumous medal. It is unclear if the Russian military is aware the commander survived or whether Ukraine has informed it he is a prisoner.
Kros, the commander of the 15th National Guard unit that made the assault, said: “As a human, I was shocked that they left him behind. But as a soldier I know my enemy and I know it is not an uncommon practice for them.”
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