By Kit Klarenberg -Dec 20, 2023
Extremely cheap to produce, FPV drones can destroy military vehicles, and entire squadrons of soldiers. For a few hundred dollars, a tank costing millions may be permanently disfigured.
On December 15th, horrific footage began circulating widely. In it, an individual bursts into a crowded local Ukrainian council meeting in Keretsky, Zakarpattia Oblast, then casually scatters grenades across the room, which duly detonate within seconds. The BBC reported 26 individuals were injured in the ensuing blast, six of them severely, while one was killed. The shocking story almost immediately vanished from mainstream view, and details remain sketchy.
Nonetheless, Britain’s state broadcaster astonishingly asserted that while “many Ukrainians have access to weaponry due to the war with Russia,” there was “no evidence yet that the attack was related to the conflict.” Oleksii Arestovych, once key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, now vying for his former employer’s position, begged to differ. In an extended post on X (formerly Twitter), based on “information that requires clarification,” he succinctly elucidated how the shocking incident resulted directly from Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.
Arestovych alleged the culprit was a local representative of Zelensky’s ruling Servant of the People party. Conscripted into the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ 128th Brigade, he fought the Russian army, before receiving a disability discharge. Upon returning from the front line, he “sought social assistance,” which was unforthcoming. Nonetheless, the ailing veteran “found a way to attract attention to himself” – by carrying out the grenade attack.
If Arestovych’s account is accurate, then what transpired is surely but the first of a countless many similar incidents to come – not merely in Ukraine, but Europe too. Now Kiev is on the verge of being comprehensively abandoned by its proxy sponsors, betrayal lies imminently ahead for countless individuals. Equipped with extensive battlefield experience, able to access weapons of war and trained in their use, and understandably bitter, a mighty whirlwind will inevitably be reaped.
‘Drone-proof’
Arestovych drew specific attention to the “thousands of morally exhausted drone operators” who will return from the frontline when the war in Ukraine is finally over, if not before:
“Let me remind you…you can’t escape from FPV even by car.”
While barely acknowledged by the mainstream media, let alone Western leaders, FPV (“first-person view”) drones have emerged as a most remarkable and deadly battlefield innovation over the course of Russia’s invasion. These contraptions speedily flit around battlefields unseen and unheard, carrying highly explosive payloads, with flying ranges of up to 10 kilometres from their operators. FPV usage on both sides has ever-increasingly rocketed since February 2022, to the extent multiple Telegram channels exclusively feature FPV footage, publishing an endless stream daily.
Extremely cheap to produce, FPV drones can destroy military vehicles, and entire squadrons of soldiers. For a few hundred dollars, a tank costing millions may be permanently disfigured. Many videos, too gruesome to feature here, depict terrified soldiers futilely attempting to escape from or shoot down FPV drones that have locked onto them, and desperately failing until the screen bleakly turns black. There is, it seems, literally nothing targets can do when decisively caught in their crosshairs.
The consumer drone market in Europe and the US has surged in recent years. Many children will likely receive the latest upgrade this Christmas. A research report published in October valued the future smartphone-controlled drone market in the billions of dollars. Incidents such as London’s vast Gatwick Airport being shut down for 30 hours in December 2018, due to multiple drone sightings in its immediate airspace, have led many governments to attempt to regulate their use.
However, legal frameworks and oversight remain weak. Users are simply expected to adhere to stated rules. There has been no dedicated effort to “drone-proof” cities, or establish emergency measures to identify and if necessary down rogue drones, and capture their pilots. In October 2014, a drone slipped into Belgrade’s Partizan Stadium during a Euro 2016 qualifying match between Albania and Serbia, unfurling a flag bearing a map of ‘Greater Albania’. This provoked a fight between players and fans, and the match was abandoned.
Almost 10 years later, drone technology is considerably more advanced. Now, imagine a drone packed with explosives flying into a football stadium. Or striking a crowd at a music festival. Or crash landing in a traffic jam. Or targeting a residential home. Consider too drones are routinely used by authorities and private citizens alike to monitor major events for benign purposes, and the innate difficulty – if not impossibility – of discerning whether a hostile actor is behind the controls, until it’s too late.
‘Language they understand’
In July 2022, a report issued by the British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee contained a dedicated section on the risk of citizens who had traveled overseas for “extreme right-wing terrorism purposes” having been “further radicalized” by the experience. It warned they will have “developed connections with others” who share their violent ideology.
The country they visited, and whom or what they “may have fought,” was redacted. Yet, it is beyond doubt this section referred to fighters returning from Ukraine. The Committee ominously warned there was “no process in place” to monitor these individuals upon their arrival. By contrast, in April French security services swooped on two local Neo-Nazis immediately following their return from Kiev. They were carrying illegal assault rifle ammunition, and jailed for 15 months.
Both were already on the radar of French domestic spying agency DGSI, which held files on them for endangering national security. Next time, Western governments may not be so lucky. The same month Britain’s intelligence and security watchdog angsted about returning fighters from Ukraine, Europol issued a dire warning about “the proliferation of firearms and explosives in Ukraine.” The organisation forecast:
“[This] could lead to an increase in firearms and munitions trafficked into the EU via established smuggling routes or online platforms…this threat might even be higher once the conflict has ended.”
There is a clear historical precedent for Western sponsorship of extremist forces boomeranging in spectacular, deadly fashion. Throughout the 1992/5 Bosnian war, the US and its allies supported Mujahideen fighters. They arrived on CIA “black flights” from all over the world, and received a seemingly endless flow of weapons, in breach of a United Nations embargo.
Quickly gaining a reputation for brutality against enemy soldiers and civilians alike, and false flag attacks on their own positions and public spaces, their presence was pivotal to the Bosnian Muslims’ war effort. US Balkans negotiator Richard Holbrooke has stated they “wouldn’t have survived” without the Mujahideen’s assistance.
Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, Mujahideen fighters were compelled to leave Bosnia. Immediately after it was signed, Bosnian Croat forces fighting alongside British and American mercenaries began assassinating the group’s leadership, sending the fighters scattering. Some fled to Albania along with their US-supplied weapons, where they joined the incipient Kosovo Liberation Army, another Western-backed extremist entity.
Others were intercepted with the CIA’s help, and deported to their countries of origin to stand trial for terror offences. This was perceived as a gross betrayal by the Mujahideen’s senior leadership, which included Osama bin Laden. In August 1998, two US embassies in East Africa were simultaneously bombed in a suicide attack. A day earlier, the bin Laden-linked Islamic Jihad published a threat, explicitly referring to US involvement in the extradition of the group’s “brothers” from Albania. They cautioned an appropriate “response” was forthcoming:
“We are interested in briefly telling the Americans that their message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being [prepared], because we – with God’s help – will write it in the language that they understand.”
The embassy attacks marked the beginning of bin Laden’s jihad against the US, which culminated in 9/11. Two of the purported hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, were veterans of the Bosnian war. As The Grayzone exposed in April, both – if not others involved – may have been working for the CIA on the day of the attacks.
Kit Klarenberg
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
