Battling Under a Canopy of Drones

I embedded with the battalion three days later. The government had mandated an evacuation of Kupyansk in August, and, as my translator and I entered the city, its ghostly silence was punctuated by the sound of incoming and outgoing munitions. Huge craters gaped on the roadside; factories lay in ruins. Kupyansk sits on a hill that slopes down to the Oskil River. The main bridge had been destroyed, but a makeshift earthwork allowed vehicles to cross. Tank wreckage littered the mud, and smoke meant to thwart laser-guided missiles billowed from a cannister.