Brovdi wants to cut off Crimea from Russia

Deep in an underground bunker, where screens broadcast real-time data from the front, the commander of Ukraine's drone force studies terabytes of information to devise his next campaign: cutting off Crimea from Russia.

Increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone attacks in Russian-occupied parts of the country have disrupted military logistics and fuel supplies, prompting authorities to introduce fuel rationing in Crimea last month.

Robert Brovdy, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, said the campaign over the past month has reduced traffic on the Novorossiya highway, a key Russian military supply route through occupied southern Ukraine to Crimea, by more than two-thirds.

Brovdy, better known by his wartime nickname "The Hungarian," an allusion to his ethnic Hungarian origins, said that Ukraine would have full control of the route within the next month.

“We will isolate Crimea in the near future,” Brody told Reuters in his cramped bunker cabin, drinking black tea and smoking cigarette after cigarette.

In 2014, Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and parts of eastern Ukraine.

Brody described shooting vehicles on an exposed highway as "as easy as shooting partridges in an open field."

President Vladimir Putin acknowledged last week that Ukrainian drone attacks were causing damage, but said they posed no threat to the Russian economy.

Military analysts say Ukraine's campaign of medium-range strikes inside Russian-controlled territory has cut off supplies to Russian forces on the front, bringing their advance to a near halt last month, and weakened Russian air defenses, paving the way for longer-range strikes that have destroyed oil infrastructure and weapons production facilities deep inside Russia.

Brody said one of his strategic goals is to force Moscow to withdraw troops, rather than sending them forward.

"We will create conditions that will make it extremely difficult for any military personnel or those working in the defense industry to remain in Crimea, in the temporarily occupied territories, or to use access routes to them."

From businessman to soldier

Over more than four years of war, Brovdy has transformed himself from a wealthy grain merchant into one of Ukraine's most effective military commanders. Since taking command of Ukraine's drone force last June, the 50-year-old has dramatically expanded its operations.

The number of medium-range combat missions increased 28-fold over the year, while deep-sea strikes on Russian territory increased almost fourfold over the same period, the commander of the drone force said.

In the first five months of this year, these units destroyed 174 Russian air defense complexes, worth about $5,4 billion, Brovdi said, paving the way for other targets.

By systematically targeting Russian military personnel, oil facilities, and weapons production, Brovdy hopes to inflict losses painful enough to undermine Moscow's ability, and its willingness, to continue the war.

Brovdy claims that Ukraine has not, and will not, directly target civilians and civilian targets. Russia has accused Kiev in recent weeks of killing dozens of civilians in occupied Ukraine.

Michael Coffman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said advances in drone technology make it feasible for Ukraine to eventually cut off Crimea. But achieving the broader strategic goal of pushing back Russian forces would still require a coordinated ground offensive.

Kofman added that Russia's elite drone unit, known as Rubicon, is making great efforts to neutralize Ukraine's current advantage in medium-range drones.

On Russia's most wanted list

Brody, who was convicted in absentia in Russia in March on terrorism charges, is one of Moscow's top targets. His air war is being waged from a deep underground location near the front lines. A Reuters team was driven to meet Brody in a van with tinted windows and then escorted down a flight of stairs.

Brovdy, originally from western Ukraine, joined the army as a volunteer at the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022. He created his “Hungarian Birds” unit, today Ukraine’s most powerful drone brigade, from scratch.

Every attack is recorded, verified, and logged. Monitors on the wall display a detailed performance scoreboard, updated in real time. Between 10 and 12 terabytes of information are archived daily for use in future AI models.

Brovdi, who spiced his statements with dark humor, presented the war in business terms.

"This is our accounting from previous business projects, which we adapted exclusively to military needs: we replaced grain trucks, wagons and grain with types of weapons, ammunition, and our clientele is also a little different," he said.

By analyzing data, Brovdi seeks to remove the "human factor" from warfare: "a man can be tired, he can be biased, he can make mistakes."

After his unit achieved one of the highest kill rates in the military, Brovdy became a key figure in Kiev's strategy to focus the power of drones on individual Russian soldiers to make up for its own manpower shortages.

Drone units, which make up 2,5 percent of the Ukrainian armed forces, were responsible for about a third of Russian losses in the past 12 months, according to their data.

The plan is to increase the drone force to five percent of the military, Brody said.

"By expanding the use of drones - not just within drone units, but across the military as a whole - we are significantly increasing the number of targets destroyed," Brovdi said.