Russia Adding Trench Screens, Hide Troop Movements From Ukraine Drones

• Russia appears to be adding protective screens to its trenches to hide its troops’ movements.
• The screens make it more difficult for Ukrainian exploding drones to strike Russian positions.
• A military expert told Business Insider that the screens will likely prove to be an effective tool.

Russia appears to be adding protective screens to its trenches to hide its troop movements from Ukrainian drones.

A video posted to Telegram by soldiers from Ukraine’s Marine Corps shows a first-person view, or FPV, drone striking a trench lined with protective screens.

The post claimed that the video showed the “destruction of personnel of the Russian occupation forces,” but it is unclear from the footage if anyone was actually hit.

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Washington DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider that screens like this “don’t provide any protection but they do make it harder for kamikaze drones to strike the Russians and for reconnaissance drones to identify Russian positions.”

“Protective screens will be effective against drones in the sense that they will conceal where the Russians are,” he said, adding: “You can see that in the video in that there was no clear target for the drone to attack.”

While the protective screens in the footage do not cover the entirety of the trenches, there appeared to be frameworks in place that would allow them to be extended.

Cancian said this was a “sensible adaptation for an environment where drones of all kinds are common.”

Drones have been a crucial weapon for both Russia and Ukraine throughout the full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022, and both sides have continued to develop more advanced models.

Ukraine has recently unveiled new drones such as the jamming-resistant Backfire, the Ratel S ground drone, and the Marichka underwater drone.

For its part, Russia has focused on ramping up production, including by designing its own version of Iran’s Shahed attack drone, called the Geran-2.

Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of the Achilles company of Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Airmobile Brigade, said earlier this month that Russia had far more drones in its frontline arsenal.

“In priority frontline sectors, we have the following ratio: one of our drones to five or seven enemy drones,” he said.