A skateboarding Ukrainian teenager has been hailed as a “hero” after using a toy drone to help his country’s forces retrieve Russians advancing on the capital.
Andrii Pokrasa, 15, was able to detect the light of a convoy of military vehicles from his drone after being called to help due to his experience with the devices. He shared the information with the Ukrainian military who were able to destroy the convoy.
“He was the only one who had experience with drones in this region,” said Yurii Kasjanov, commander of the unmanned reconnaissance section of the armed forces. “He’s a real hero, a Ukrainian hero.”
Civil protection forces had approached him because they needed the GPS coordinates of the convoy.
“They gave us information about where the Russian column could be. Our goal was to find the exact coordinates and provide the coordinates to the soldiers, “Pokrasa told Global News.
“It was one of the largest moving columns on the road to Zhytomyr and we managed to find it because one of the trucks turned on the lights for a long time.”
Details of the Pokrasa findings were sent to a territorial defense unit via social media, which was then able to stop forces near Berezivka, which is about 40 kilometers west of Kyiv.
“I gave them the coordinates and the photos, and then they pointed out the location,” he said. “And I needed to coordinate more specifically where they should be bombarded with artillery.”
Pokrasa described the time when he saw the convoy as “very, very scary”, but was determined not to let the Russians manage to invade his city.
The incident was confirmed by both Mr. Kasjanov and the boy’s parents.
Consumer drones have been widely used during the Russian invasion to document evidence of war crimes and troop movements. These images leave Russia with few places to hide, as they are widely shared on social media and with Ukrainian forces.
“It’s a change of game for the war,” Taras Troiak, a former drone retailer who heads the Ukrainian Federation of Drone Owners, told Global News. “If we didn’t have these operators and drones that could help the Ukrainian army, I think Kyiv could already be occupied by Russian forces.”