Andriy Bukin from the electronic intelligence unit

Andriy Bukin from the electronic intelligence unit: Most of the information was collected by drones, which the Minister called “wedding drones”

Do you remember Andriy Bukin with call sign Baton, whom Censor readers met last summer?
Back then, in our interview, we didn’t discuss Andriy’s specialization in electronic intelligence.
Because such a conversation was inappropriate. We just informed him that Bukin’s unit was performing combat missions in the Sviatohirsk forest.
This time, the soldier with the call sign Baton was much more open in our conversation about electronic intelligence. Especially since his unit is currently undergoing changes. After one year of war, the militaries from the Kulchytskyi battalion are now training and coordinating new units in the Offensive Guard.
This is where we started our conversation, and it was interesting to find out how the experienced Bukin assesses the new combat structures and what is happening to him and his comrades.

• First, I would like to remind readers that the Offensive Guard consists of 6 professional assault brigades of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose task is to liberate the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The National Guard of Ukraine invites you to join “Bureviy”,
  “Chervona Kalyna”, “Karadag”, “Rubizh”, “Spartan” and the most famous “Azov”.
  At the same time, the State Border Guard Service is recruiting volunteers for the
  “Stalevyi kordon” brigade, and the National Police is recruiting for an assault brigade called “Liut”. And now a question. Andriy, in which of these brigades are you serving?
• We are serving in the Kyiv-based Bureviy Brigade. So we had a Kyiv unit and we are geographically transferred to the Kyiv unit, which is Bureviy.
• Does this brigade have any specifics compared to other brigades of the National Guard or is the difference purely geographical?
• They all perform approximately the same tasks and are manned according to the same staffing levels, for the same tasks. They will have the same functionality. But the issue is that each brigade will most likely be assigned to a specific area of the frontline. That is why both the staffing and the brigades are being made according to
  NATO standards and accordingly are staffed in a similar way. This applies to
  National Guard brigades, the 6 brigades in question. Brigades of the National Police and the Border Guard Service will have specific tasks to be assigned to them.
• The name “Hvardiia nastupu ” itself means both general tasks and
  motivation that the guardsmen should have. From what you see and hear around you, how clearly are both present?
• I can only talk about our electronic intelligence unit, which was part of the battalion named after Kulchytsky and specifically about the battalion named after Kulchytsky itself. What happened in our case? The unit I was previously part of, gathered all the people who wanted to go to the front and were ready to fight and transferred them to a new brigade. Of course, there were a lot of bureaucratic complications.
• What exactly are the difficulties?
• In fact, there is a complete demobilization there. You have to solve all the issues with the documents for weapons and equipment that you were provided with a year ago. Given the fact that we have a lot of different electronic devices and my commander was financially responsible, the situation is that the entire unit has already been transferred to a new unit and he is still solving the issue with weapons and equipment, writing off property that was lost during the fighting. These are bureaucratic problems that take up a lot of valuable time.
• That’s right. But the philosophy of the transformation is that we take motivated people from the Guard units who are ready to go to the front and fight tomorrow. And not just to fight, but to carry out some offensive actions to liberate their territories. This is conceptually correct. The other specificity is in the issuance of orders and how people treat these orders. There are various stories about mobilized soldiers to the offensive brigades. But they have a lack of motivation or they want to be in other units. But this is not a question of the Offensive Guard units themselves but of the territorial centers or former
  military registration and enlistment offices that conduct this mobilization. As for my battalion and unit, I can surely say that they are the most motivated people from the former unit. They fought in the war and have a great desire to continue this mission. This is how we formed a group of people who wanted to join this offensive brigade
• How to join the ranks of the Offensive Guard? And is the personnel logistics inside the Offensive Guard is better organized than in many “regular” units of the Ukrainian army?
• Again, I can’t say for all the brigades that are being created.
  I will tell you about ours. The brigade leadership understands that
  battalions must be formed quickly and new units must be manned in the same way
  that are available. This can be felt in their attitude to the soldiers. Of course, the clerks are now having a hard time and the deputy brigade commanders are running around with all this paperwork to staff everything to make new staffing plans and supplies. They want to send people for training and then for coordination, so that they get to the front prepared. You can feel that people are motivated. To finalize the idea with the “Offensive Guard” logistically. Brigade 3027 is an exemplary guards brigade itself, the first Petro Doroshenko guards brigade under the president.
• That is, it is the elite.
• Yes, it is. And accordingly, the new leadership uses new approaches to the soldiers who come to serve. If we put aside all the bureaucratic mechanisms that have to be passed to get registered. We can clearly see a human attitude towards the soldier. You can feel it.
• It is logical because you need motivation to attack. If you want to motivate a soldier, treat him properly. He has to feel it and then he will give back.
  Andriy, are you really taught by the best instructors in firearms training and
  tactical medicine?
• Our division has different specifics. We deal with radio engineering devices. Accordingly, our tasks are a little different from those of the linear units. We have 100% of the personnel who are currently in the unit and as soon as we transferred, they immediately went to training the next day. Why did this happen? Not because we have no experience or do not understand what we are doing. For 10 months we were at the front without rotations and without staying. This leaves a big imprint on how you work, what you work with and what skills you have developed. For 10 months we have only worked with those gadgets that are in mass production. This is the entire line of DJI drones, these are Mavic, these are Matrixx 300, then later appeared 30 and so on. That is, this is what was already available at the beginning of the war and was being produced for the masses. But during the year of war, everything changed! There were
  a fairly large number of Ukrainian companies that started manufacturing drones in Ukraine. We see a huge number of them. Of course, they are handmade and made as DIY. But the concept itself is correct. The war has given a boost to the development of UAVs in Ukraine and we are now better than any NATO member state, for example. And we’re better than UAVs manufacturers in Canada or the United States.
• Excuse me, is it your opinion? Or do your foreign colleagues say so?
• It is a proven fact that Ukrainian prototypes fly much better than what is mass-produced and available for money on the European or American and even Chinese, markets.
• We have every reason to be proud.
• War always gives impetus to the development of certain industries. We know that UAVs are the eyes not only of artillery, but also of infantry and intelligence. It is a source of information.
  Accordingly, there are not only Mavic-3s or DJI series, or a US military drone that does not fly in Ukraine due to various circumstances. So people started making drones with a certain amount of knowledge. We have a lot of smart people, physicists, astrophysicists, designers – working on these problems. Those people who spent a year in the war have a lot to learn. From large copters and bombers to small drones, to ephemeral drones. Starting from large complexes of recycled agro-drones or custom-made ones that can carry a payload and ending with small fpv-drones that can be assembled like a construction set, namely 4 boards, 6 screws and the cheapest video camera that will perform certain functions required by a particular unit.

We have a huge task ahead of us to divide into groups in a very short period of time and acquire new skills that we didn’t have before.

• Then I will rephrase my original question. Do your instructors teach you basic topics? Or are you already such experienced professionals that you can be
  instructors for others?
• On certain UAV series, we can teach directly. But the issue is that a truly professional pilot has to constantly update his skills and learn something new. And in the short period of time we’ve been here: Someone went to learn wings, someone went to learn big copters, others went to learn fpvs. We work with the best training centers in Ukraine. It took me more than a week
  to visit the largest UAV manufacturers, talk to designers, donors, and colleagues who are directly involved in this
  area. Since I am from the Sumy region, and this is a border region, when I came home, I spent 8 days traveling around the Sumy region alone, meeting with people who conduct reconnaissance at my home.
  To find out what they know, namely which UAVs they use and which they don’t.
• Did they learn anything new from you?
• Of course, we shared the information they were interested in about the means of operation, the work schedule, and methods of transmitting information directly to the artillerymen. There was no any unified protocol for how pilots will work. It is quite similar in general. But everyone has their own nuances.
• And a lot of things are figured out on the spot and under specific circumstances.
• Geography. Location, access, who you are working for – is it reconnaissance, the 120th mortar, or more serious artillery.
• Are we not giving away any secrets to the Muscovites now?
• The muscovites use almost the same stuff. But there is a big difference between us, which I will not talk about now.
• And another big difference between us and them is our powerful horizontal connections.
• Actually, this is the point, but let our readers forgive us if we go deeper into this topic, it will be unnecessary. But our secret is really in our horizontal connections and decision-making levels. If the crew is smart and has good motivation and a commander who organizes their work, they go directly to those who do the work on the big guns.
• This number of horizontal connections stems from two factors. First of all, we protect our land. That is why we always have more initiative than the occupiers (especially with their russian vertical traditions). And secondly, we have a civil society, which they do not have. This also motivates these horizontal ties.
• Well said. Both the first and the second. Horizontal connections are also civil society, but in war. The ability to organize ourselves because we don’t expect some general to come from Kyiv and win the war on the front line. In order for us to succeed, we have to roll up our sleeves and take the initiative into our own hands.
• Andriy, you spent a significant part of the last year in the Sviatohirsk forests. Did I get that right?
  -Yes. The Sviati Hory is a huge reserve from the town of Izyum and up to the town of Lysychansk.
• Now you are in the Offensive Guard so what exactly will change in your aerial and radio reconnaissance work? Try to explain without giving the enemy important information. How much will the specifics of your work change when you have to cover long distances in an offensive?
• Listen, as Leonid Danilovich Kuchma once said, it has already happened (smiles. E.K.). We were stationary for about 2.5 months. Sviatohirsk, Droysheve, Lyman — from the middle of June when we were knocked out of Sviatohirsk, until the beginning of September. And from the beginning of September until January we were in an active offensive.
• What is the difference between these two phases of your work?
• There are more than two phases. For example, there is a line that does not move due to some geographical difficulties. They have a height, we cannot storm it or vice versa. Or we go across the river (as we did in Tetianivka) and the enemy shells our positions. We shell theirs and they shell ours. It’s all one piece of work. We choose a shelter, one, two, three and try to work from these shelters to find them. This is a stationary thing. We can live there until the position is burned down. Over the summer, we lost four places we stayed. They just burned down.

Another story is when we have an active offensive and their troops are retreating. This story was from Sviatohirsk. It was the village of Novoselivka-Drobysheve-Lyman, when we were trying to catch up with them and kill them. This is a completely different format of work. Because you are constantly on the move. You don’t stop day or night. And you need to provide not only intelligence but also you need to provide “eyes” for the people who are going to attack.

• What changes when you work in such a volume?
• Dynamics. You and the assault teams are ahead of the curve. Your battalion may not have pulled up, received armored vehicles or left. Offensives do not happen chaotically like in Genghis Khan’s horde, when we are on horses and then: woo-hoo! In fact, everything is structured. The zones are divided between units so that they can settle themselves in a certain area and not interfere with each other. It’s a lot of logistics. And we can have a situation where we work as part of a battalion or as part of a battalion in the interest of some larger brigade. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, for example. But it turns out that it has reached and established itself on a certain territory. And the units you worked with artillery, infantry, and intelligence — they are moving on. And it’s clear that with the permission of your superior commander in the battalion, you move with them. The battalion stops and you move on to keep in touch and help the guys to move on.
• You have described very well how the specifics of a rapid offensive change. What geographical boundaries of the dynamic offensive you took part in from September to early October?
• Svyatohirsk – Oleksandrivka – Novoselivka – Drobysheve – Lyman.
• As far as I remember, you were also involved with boats.
• When we stormed Sviatohirsk, we stormed with boats. And then we moved in the offensive whoever was capable of what. Some of us were moving on armor, others on transported vehicles… Our task was not just to liberate the territory. Our task was to stop them when they were retreating. They were knocked out, they were retreating, and we had to break the column. So our task was to help the guys from the artillery to stop those who were leaving.This is a dynamic offensive.
  There was also a non-dynamic offensive. In October we got to Bilohorivka. The commander’s order was that it was an offensive, and there were certain deadlines. But this is the front line. We did not take a step back and so they did not. And there’s a lot of fighting. They have huge losses. We have losses. But we are fighting in an open area.
• What was the difficulty of your unit’s work then?
• The fact that you arrive and there is no shelter where you can hide a group that could fly every day. And this is a completely different story than the previous two. Because when you are in a state of dynamic offensive you can fly out of the basement today, and tomorrow you will need to dig something with a shovel. And when you have such a steady offensive it is not clear how the line will move and whether it will move at all. And you have to choose stationary positions where they are not physically present. There is a destroyed settlement there. There is no shelter. And in order to perform your functions you need to be 150 meters away from the extreme trench of our positions. Otherwise, neither the geography nor their electronic warfare equipment allows you to perform your functions with these copters.
• And this stage was probably the most dangerous for you?
• The worst part of this stage is the transportation itself. The road itself both to and from there is one of the most dangerous elements. You can find a more or less normal shelter, dig deeper somewhere, find a basement that is not destroyed enough. But the process of arriving and leaving the vehicle is very dangerous. Like, for example, near the village of Bilohorivka,
  where there was about 900 meters of road shelled by everyone both our military and theirs. And this is the Road of Life. You are driving and it is unclear whether you will get through or not. We left our cars there and within 14 days we lost 7 or 8 cars. They just disappeared before our eyes. A tank fires and that’s nothing left of the vehicle. And there was no option not to leave the car. Because in order to get my working group out we had two cars to get my team out. And this is twice the risk of getting hit on the road itself.

That’s the way it is. Each of our series of war was specific in its own way with its own extremely difficult tasks. The same was the case with the attack on the city of Kreminna. We were working from the forest from the lowlands, which is illogical for flying. Because you always have to choose the dominant altitude for flying, and fly from a high altitude. And there geographically you take off from 60 meters, and you need to reach 120 meters. You have a 60-meter difference!

• Here the reader may not understand. They know the name of your unit, but when you say “fly, take off” you need to explain.
• It’s very simple: I was in charge of a group of pilots flying different UAVs. And our task was as follows: we conducted reconnaissance, observation for artillery and analyzed the information we saw. In order to form our own vision of the frontline.
• Do I understand correctly that your entire unit has now joined Bureviy?
• Not just joined, we have tripled in size.
• Let me ask you an important question about the strategy for developing the drone fleet in the
  Ukrainian army. Many people were very unhappy when Minister Reznikov said an ill-considered phrase that drones are needed that are expensive and fly drones, not “wedding” Mavic’s, and so on.
  So recently I interviewed a pilot of the Avtomaidan crew who works in the North. And in his opinion, it is now necessary to supply units especially on the front line with cheap drones. Because these are the eyes that every unit needs.
  What is your opinion on what kind of UAVs the state should rely on?
• This is a really important question and here’s what I want to say about it. 52% of the information gathered by intelligence, gathered by the DJI and the autel types, is what the minister called “wedding” drones. The other 48% of the information is collected by large
  expensive systems like Leleka, Furia, and other gadgets that are already in service. But most of the information is collected by these drones. No manufacturer will be able to supply the Armed Forces with as many as stationary companies that have been producing UAVs for years. Because even DJI does not have time to manufacture drones. They are simply bought out in batches. They are just going to the
  production line and various foundations like Come Back Alive, the Shelter Foundation, and so on are buying them out in batches. Well. There are no such large capacities in Ukraine that we could cover the need for UAVs in the Armed Forces. So the minister just needs to review the information he collects. Maybe when we grow to the point where we have large capacities in Ukraine… Or we will open a Ukrainian UAV manufacturing plant somewhere in China or India which will be able to saturate this market… But today it is criminal to refuse civilian drones. On the contrary, the state of Ukraine should do everything to improve transportation from abroad.
  And secondly. No budget of Ukraine or assistance from partner countries can compare with the amount of assistance provided by Ukrainians themselves. Not only those who live in Ukraine but also abroad. Because a huge number of UAVs were bought by relatives, friends and foundations. The state itself simply cannot provide the number of these UAVs. This is the difference.
• To summarize your entire experience of the full-scale phase of the war, what day do you consider the most successful and why?
• I can say very clearly. One of the most successful days was the day of the liberation of Novoselivka and the offensive on Drobysheve. We had a perfect campaign to work with the artillery guys. We hit several pieces of enemy equipment.
• So, based on the information you collected, analyzed and provided to the artillery, were they able to work out the enemy’s positions?
• On that day, they worked perfectly on radio interception. They picked up information of the infantry movement in a certain section of the front in front of the bridge.
• And were our people ready for it?
• Yes, we were ready. We took this information, flew there, pointed our artillery and waited for them until they arrived. Our guys worked on their equipment and we received a radio interception
  However we hit their equipment but the infantry was unharmed. And then they told the second crew that they could not go now, the vehicles were damaged, so they would move on foot and cross the dam. We heard this and passed the information on to the artillery. They hadn’t even come out yet and we had already redeployed the guns and we had already practiced. For me, as a person who builds logistics chains it was an excellent day. This is not the work of one person. This is the work of groups of people, different guns, different guys from the intelligence who listened to up to 6 radio stations. Plus the timely transmission of information.
• Perfectly coordinated work.
• And it was not only the work of Kulchytsky’s battalion.
  Different units from different brigades of the Armed Forces cooperated. Line communications worked by 300%.
• From the maximum positive point, let’s move on to the difficult moments of your life in this war. At one point, when you came on vacation to your native Sumy you told me that it was a difficult time and you wanted to return to the front as soon as possible. Why?
• Because you live the war. When you have been living with news from the front for 10 months and know nothing else but 2.5 kilometers of the front and you are pulled out for a conditional three days these are the hardest three days. Because mentally you stay therein the information field of the war, and physically you see a completely different picture, relaxed people, music,
  delicious food, meetings with relatives. There is a huge sense of dissonance. You cannot switch from the war. Because in 4 days you have to be there again.
  Are you irritated?
• The irritation actually comes, probably, on the tenth or twelfth day when you are here. When you realize that nobody needs a soldier in Ukraine.
• When you look at yourself in the mirror, from February 24 to today, how much gray hair is in your beard?
• I don’t know, I don’t count it (smiles. – Y.K.). I think it has increased. In fact, to be honest, a soldier who has lived a year in the war will be spitting out this war for decades. Without exception, everyone’s back, knees, heart, and head will be sore.

People look at life in a completely different way. You stop appreciating material things that are honored on the Big Land, like money, a phone, some other crap. In fact, these things are not important. What matters is your health, life, your comrades-in-arms, the task you are performing.

• A soldier cannot choose the direction of the offensive. It is the prerogative of the command.
  Nevertheless, if you had your way, what direction of the offensive would you like to be in this spring and why?
• In fact, it does not matter to me where I will fight. I know the geography of the possible offensive very well. I have been many times to Avdiivka, Pisky, Opytne, Bakhmut, Soledar. By and large, it doesn’t matter where you are. Of course, I would like to finally liberate the Sviati Hory because they have taken up a lot of
  time of my life. And I would like to take off my patch and hang it on a carpet somewhere.
  But that is up to the commander to decide…

Yevhen Kuzmenko, “Censor.NET”

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