The secretive and unlikely head of Ukraine’s unmanned methods forces, whose current strikes have embarrassed the Kremlin, grumbles that he doesn’t like interviews, however his face lights up when the dialog turns to maths and warfare.
“Numbers are the inspiration of warfare. All the pieces begins there. Anybody who ignores this can not play this sport. They are going to be followers reasonably than leaders,” Brovdi instructed AFP.
Higher identified by his call-sign of Madyar, Brovdi was a rich grain dealer with no army background when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
He volunteered to struggle, then arrange his personal drone unit — “Madyar’s Birds” — properly earlier than many had realised the complete significance of the know-how, rapidly incomes plaudits contained in the army.
Zelensky appointed him in June 2025 to command the military’s total unmanned methods forces.His path displays how Ukraine has leveraged innovation to struggle Russia’s extra conventionally highly effective military.
“I merely introduced my accounting system with me to the warfare. We took the names of grain varieties from the desk and entered the kinds of drones and ammunition there,” he instructed AFP.
Brovdi has masterminded a number of the greatest assaults on Russia, with long-range drone strikes on oil and army services chipping away at Vladimir Putin’s warfare chest.
These assaults have made Madyar a precedence goal for Russia, he says, forcing him into secret underground bunkers.
On a go to to at least one web site, AFP journalists needed to observe strict protocols, together with a trip in a automobile with blacked-out home windows.
‘Harmful, dedicated’
Ukrainian paintings and drone carcasses present an eclectic decor to the inside of Brovdi’s underground bunker, from the place he instructions a unified power of a few of Ukraine’s highest-ranking drone models.
He receives a stream of calls in his windowless workplace, stepping out and in to talk to groups hunched over screens in a command submit.
Final week his forces hit Saint Petersburg, simply as Putin’s flagship financial summit commenced within the metropolis.
Different long-range strikes have sparked fires which have burned for days at oil services a whole lot of kilometres behind the entrance line.
The strikes have drawn grudging recognition from Russian army analysts.
“Madyar is a harmful, dedicated, {and professional} enemy,” Andrey Medvedev, a blogger and Russian-state information reporter wrote final 12 months.
One other, the Rybar Telegram channel, credited Madyar with creating “the best formation of its type” throughout the Ukrainian military.
His unmanned methods forces declare accountability for 30 to 35 % of all confirmed destroyed Russian targets, though they make up simply two % of the Ukrainian military.
His technique to win the warfare is a guess on numbers: kill extra Russians than Moscow can mobilise.
To enhance the effectiveness of strikes, Madyar depends on information from the movies streaming into his command submit.
They present Ukrainian drones chasing Russian forces close to the entrance, searching them as they flee by way of fields and forests till the feed cuts on impression.
Some movies make it onto Brovdi’s social media accounts — the place he’s adopted by a whole lot of 1000’s — with cartoony music and mocking captions.
Some have discovered the footage mocking the useless to be morally questionable, and specialists mentioned its publication raises questions on potential warfare crimes beneath the Geneva Conventions.
However Madyar is extremely standard in Ukraine, with about 70 % of Ukrainians saying they belief him — one of many highest scores in a ballot revealed Wednesday by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology.
‘Revenge’
Subsequent to the screens of fight movies in Madyar’s bunker is paintings from famend Ukrainian painters, together with a nonetheless lifetime of flowers by Maria Prymachenko.
“Artwork permits us to floor ourselves and take our minds off the circumstances which have introduced us right here,” Madyar instructed AFP.
Earlier than the warfare, he ran an artwork basis in his native area of Transcarpathia in western Ukraine.
The works give him a sense of house, the place he can not go for safety causes.
“I am unable to lay my eyes on my favorite place at house, on some components of my home, a vase, a view from my window,” he mentioned.
His spouse enlisted within the military shortly after him, and heads his unit’s troop assist service.
Other than her, solely a small circle is aware of the place he can be even two hours forward.
The daddy of two says his power’s success is compensation for the non-public sacrifices.
“That momentary satisfaction, when you could have taken revenge by taking the distant management into your personal arms and seen the outcomes of your work with your personal eyes.”
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