KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine — Ukrainian tank platoon commander Valentyn Bohdanov remembers a time earlier in Russia’s war when heavy armor fought pitched battles like boxers trading punches in the ring. Four years into the conflict, he says such showdowns are all but impossible. 

Small but deadly “first-person-view” (FPV) drones now dominate the skies above Ukraine’s battlefields, making it extremely risky for armored vehicles to move, said Mr. Bohdanov, a senior sergeant in Ukraine’s 127^th Separate Heavy Mechanized Kharkiv Brigade. 

“They won’t enter an open field: they’ll be peppered by FPV drones and stronger ones,” said the 36-year-old, who goes by the military call sign “Bodia.”

These days, his T-72 tank, which was captured from the Russians, remains hidden beneath webbing near the snowy frontline in the northeast region of Kharkiv — reduced, effectively, to a static piece of artillery.

Mr. Bohdanov, who has served since early in Moscow’s February 2022 invasion, has seen traditional military tactics upended as technology has forced both sides to make new battlefield calculations.

Thousands of precision drones, often costing only several hundred dollars apiece, roam the skies daily across an expanding “kill zone” along the 1,200-kilometer front. They are joined by a growing range of more powerful drones capable of flying farther and carrying heavier payloads.

The ever-present threat from the sky makes virtually any movement — from troop rotations and evacuations to tank assaults — increasingly deadly.

Drone-inflicted casualties have jumped from less than 10% of the total in 2022 to up to 80% last year, as much of the war has morphed into an “air battle of mutual denial,” according to a report by the French Institute of International Relations published this month.

It described the shift as part of “a new logic of warfare defined by speed of innovation, rapid adaptation, and seamless technological integration” that would include other technologies including artificial intelligence.

‘IN THE AIR ALL THE TIME’
Mobile drone-hunting teams, like the one Reuters recently visited near the besieged eastern city of Kostiantynivka, are now commonplace.

Patrolling roads shrouded in anti-drone netting and littered with the charred remains of vehicles, members are on constant alert for drones ranging from FPVs to larger, long-range Shaheds. They are tasked with defending supply routes critical for troops in a section of the front line where Russia is advancing.

Drone-hunter “Marine” of the 93^rd Mechanized Brigade, who introduced himself by his call sign, recalled once seeing 54 drones attack a single target within one hour.

“Three would circle, another would attack while the others join,” he said. “They’re in the air like that all the time, not letting anyone get away.”

Many soldiers who have been directly under fire describe being overwhelmed by the speed and agility of FPVs. Footage of their strikes now saturate social media on both sides.

Speaking in a military hospital in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, Andriy Meskov said he had been returning from an assignment when he and two comrades were attacked by drones that whizzed after them as they sought cover.

“We ran into a building, not really expecting that it would follow us,” said Mr. Meskov, 42, himself a drone pilot in the 151^st Separate Reconnaissance-Strike Battalion.

“The speed of a human being doesn’t compare to the speed of an FPV drone, so I didn’t even have time to pick up my rifle to shoot at it.”

NEW BATTLEFIELD LESSONS
Mr. Meskov’s knee was shattered when a drone ricocheted off his helmet and exploded near his leg.

He was eventually evacuated for medical treatment on an unmanned ground vehicle. Such ground drones are increasingly employed for tasks ranging from logistics to evacuations, to minimize casualties.

They carried out more than 7,000 missions in January, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last week. Ukraine plans to boost their production and procurement this year, he said.

Longer evacuation times are another potentially fatal consequence of the expanding “kill zone.” Col. Viacheslav Kurinnyi, 45, chief doctor at the Kharkiv hospital where Mr. Meskov was being treated, said the drone threat to vehicles had pushed the average time for medical evacuation beyond three days.

That flies in the face of the so-called “golden hour” of battlefield medicine, he added, referring to the 60-minute window when intervention is critical to saving a fighter’s life.

Ukraine’s Western allies needed to learn the lessons: “Any countries that are preparing for war at home need to realize that there will be no ‘golden hour,’” Mr. Kurinnyi said. “Maybe a ‘golden day’ if they’re lucky.”

Once his hospital received a wounded soldier who had been wearing a tourniquet for more than two months.

WAITING FOR NEXT BREAKTHROUGH
Standing next to his snow-covered tank, commander Mr. Bohdanov said he believes such weapons are being rendered irrelevant and should be scaled back in favor of more long-range artillery. His crew is open to re-training to become more effective, he added.

While tanks are still used in urban battles or in poor weather conditions, armor-led attacks have largely been replaced by small infantry assaults, said military analyst Rob Lee at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

But it is too soon to write off tanks. The pace of change means tactics could soon shift again, Mr. Lee said.

“Right now, the current role is diminished, and I think we’re waiting for the next technological breakthrough that will enable maneuvering again,” he said. — Reuters

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s parliament will discuss late next week the government’s stalled bill on a $40-billion special defense budget, which has been held up by opposition party objections attracting the concern of US lawmakers.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te last year proposed the extra defense spending to counter China, which has ramped up military pressure to force the island to accept its claim of sovereignty.

But the opposition, which has a majority in parliament, refused to review the proposal and instead advanced its own, less expensive proposals, which only fund the purchase of some of the US weapons Mr. Lai wants.

Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of 37 US lawmakers wrote to senior Taiwanese politicians expressing concern about parliament stalling the proposed defense spending.

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, the main opposition Kuomintang and its much smaller ally the Taiwan People’s Party have now agreed to schedule discussion on the government’s proposal on March 6, according to pictures of the agreement posted by lawmakers to social media.

Taiwan’s parliament speaker and his deputy, in a statement responding to the US lawmakers’ letter, pledged last week that the defense spending plan would be prioritized for review.

The United States is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.

The Trump administration has pressed its allies to increase defense spending, something Mr. Lai and his government have enthusiastically embraced. 

China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. Mr. Lai has repeatedly offered talks with China, but been rebuffed, and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. — Reuters

CANADA said on Monday it plans to provide assistance to Cuba while the island grapples with fuel shortages after Washington moved to choke off Cuba’s oil supplies.

Washington has escalated a pressure campaign against the Communist-run island and long-time US foe in recent weeks.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to block all oil from reaching Cuba, including that from ally Venezuela, pushing up prices for food and transportation and prompting severe fuel shortages and hours of blackouts.

“We are preparing a plan to assist. We are not prepared at this point to provide any further details of an announcement,” Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said on Monday, without giving details on what such an assistance will include.

The UN has warned that if Cuba’s energy needs are not met, it could cause a humanitarian crisis. Canada said last week it was monitoring the situation in Cuba and was concerned about “the increasing risk of a humanitarian crisis” there.

Emboldened by the US military’s seizure of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a deadly raid in January, Mr. Trump has repeatedly talked of acting against Cuba and pressuring its leadership.

Washington and Ottawa have also had tensions under Mr. Trump over issues like trade tariffs, Mr. Trump’s rhetoric towards Greenland, Ottawa’s attempt to warm ties with Beijing and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s remarks that “middle powers” should act together to avoid being victimized by US hegemony.

Mr. Trump has said “Cuba will be failing pretty soon,” adding that Venezuela, once the island’s top supplier, has not recently sent oil or money to Cuba.

The UN human rights office has said the US raid in which Mr. Maduro was seized was a violation of international law. Human rights experts cast Mr. Trump’s foreign policy and his focus on exploiting Venezuelan oil and squeezing Cuba as echoing an imperialist approach. — Reuters

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO — Meta  executives proceeded with a plan to encrypt the messaging services connected to its Facebook and Instagram apps despite internal warnings that it would hinder the social media giant’s ability to flag child-exploitation cases to law enforcement, according to internal company documents filed in a New Mexico state court case.

“We are about to do a bad thing as a company. This is so irresponsible,” wrote Monika Bickert, Meta’s head of content policy, in one internal chat exchange dated March 2019 as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public announcement of the plan was being prepared.

The filing, which was made public on Friday but not previously reported, contains emails, messages and briefing documents obtained in discovery for a lawsuit brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez that shed new light on what the company assessed the impact of the plan would be and how senior policy and safety executives viewed it at the time.

Mr. Torrez alleges Meta allowed predators unfettered access to underage users and connected them with victims, often leading to real-world abuse and human trafficking. A trial began this month and is the first case of its kind against Meta to reach a jury.

The information comes as Meta is facing a wave of litigation and regulatory threats globally linked to the welfare of young users on its platforms.

In addition to New Mexico’s lawsuit – which focuses on the company’s alleged failure to address child predation – a coalition of more than 40 attorneys general are pursuing claims that the company’s products broadly harm youth mental health.

Some school districts are also suing the company, while Mr. Zuckerberg testified last week in yet another case brought by attorneys representing a teenager allegedly harmed by its products in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The latest filing in the New Mexico case specifically accuses Meta of misrepresenting the safety of its plan to implement default end-to-end encryption on its Facebook-connected Messenger service, which it first announced in 2019 and later expanded to include Instagram direct messages.

HEIGHTENED RISK
End-to-end encryption – in which a sender’s message is transmitted in a format that only the recipient’s device can decode – is a standard privacy feature of many messaging apps, including Apple’s iMessage, Google Messages, and Meta’s WhatsApp.

But child safety advocates, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), have argued that the technology poses a heightened risk when built into public social networks that readily connect children to people they do not otherwise know.

The New Mexico filings show senior Meta safety executives expressing that same fear. Even as Mr. Zuckerberg claimed publicly that the company was addressing the plan’s risks, top safety and policy executives internally expressed dismay, with Ms. Bickert, the head of content policy, saying the company was making “gross misstatements of our ability to conduct safety operations,” the documents show.

“I’m not very invested in helping him sell this, I must say,” Ms. Bickert wrote of Mr. Zuckerberg’s efforts to promote encryption on privacy grounds. With end-to-end encryption, “there is no way to find the terror attack planning or child exploitation” and proactively refer those cases to law enforcement, she added.

In an email from February 2019, a Meta briefing document estimated that the company’s total reporting of child nudity and sexual exploitation imagery to the NCMEC the previous year would have fallen to 6.4 million from 18.4 million if Messenger had been encrypted, a 65% drop.

A later update to the same document said Meta would have been “unable to provide data proactively to law enforcement in 600 child exploitation cases, 1,454 sextortion cases, 152 terrorist cases [and] 9 threatened school shootings.”

ADDITIONAL SAFETY FEATURES
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in response to Reuters queries that the concerns raised by Ms. Bickert and Antigone Davis, Meta’s Global Head of Safety, led Meta to work on additional safety features before the company launched encrypted messaging on Facebook and Instagram in 2023.

While messages are encrypted by default, users can still report objectionable messages to Meta for review and possible referral to law enforcement.

“The concerns raised in 2019 represent the very reason we developed a range of new safety features to help detect and prevent abuse, all designed to work in encrypted chats,” Mr. Stone said.

Among the company’s efforts were the creation of special accounts for underage users which prevent adult users from initiating contact with minors they do not know.

Safety executives specifically raised the specter of children being groomed on the company’s semi-public social media platforms and then exploited on its private messaging services.

“FB [Facebook] allows pedophiles to find each other and kids via social graph with easy transition to Messenger,” wrote Ms. Davis in a 2019 email assessing the plan’s risks.

By contrast, she wrote, Meta’s existing encrypted messaging service WhatsApp was not directly connected to a social media platform and therefore did not carry the same risks.

“WA (WhatsApp) does not make it easy to make social connections, meaning making Messenger e2ee (end-to-end encrypted) will be far, far worse than anything we have seen/gotten a glimpse of on WA,” she said. — Reuters