How Ukraine’s Drone Schools Try to Stay Off Russia’s Radar

The leaders of several drone schools training Ukraine’s operators for the fight against Russia say they’re targets and they have to act accordingly — tightly protecting information and even moving around.

Throughout its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has launched huge drone and missile barrages at factories, training sites, and civilian infrastructure across the country, often far from the fighting in the east, straining Ukrainian defenses and serving as a constant reminder that nowhere in the country is completely safe.

Drones are prolific on the battlefield in Ukraine. Operators are priority targets. It stands to reason the schools training them for war would be too. Officials from three drone schools told Business Insider that they take steps to avoid getting hit.

Tetyana, a Ukrainian veteran who goes by the call sign “Ruda” and is now the head of R&D for Dronarium, a drone training school with sites in Kyiv and Lviv, said that it must follow strict safety rules because “the entirety of Ukraine is not safe, missile-wise, drone-wise.”

Dmytro Slediuk, head of the education department at Dronarium, told BI the safety measures, including not disclosing publicly exactly where its training centers are located and also changing their location “from time to time,” are necessary to prevent Russia from interfering with its training

To keep certain location data from getting out, the school doesn’t allow photos and videos that might reveal where its facilities are based.

The school has been mentioned by Russia’s military bloggers, influential pro-war accounts that often circulate operational details and commentary to large audiences. Though they are typically in favor of the war, they are also sometimes critical of Russia’s performance and dispute some of its defense ministry’s claims.

Rybar, a media outlet with 1.5 million Telegram subscribers, listed Dronarium as an example of Ukraine’s drone training efforts. The UK has sanctioned Rybar, initially presented as a milblogger but actually a partially Russian government-sponsored information warfare operation, and the US has offered up to $10 million for information.

Tetyana said Russian outlets have been writing about the school since 2022, the year Russia started its full-scale invasion. “As long as they write and talk about us, it means that they are afraid of us,” she said. But it also means that they’re on Russia’s radar.

She said the school and its attendees strictly adhere to a set of critical cybersecurity rules, and said there are also general safety rules in place. “When the air raid siren is on, all training activities, all the work, everything gets suspended, and we deconcentrate and get into safe shelters.” She said no one is complacent.

Vitalii Pervak, CEO of another training school, Karlsson, Karas & Associates, said that safety steps are crucial because “the Russians are constantly hunting for places where military personnel gather.”

Ukrainian officials have confirmed that Russia has hit some Ukrainian military training sites, killing personnel. It’s the kind of thing air defenses can try to prevent, but Ukraine has suffered shortages throughout the war. Ukraine has also successfully hit Russian bases and gatherings of Russian personnel.

The key is to prevent Russia from gaining sufficient knowledge of the school to target it. Its steps include “everyone who works at KK&A, including the cleaners,” having to do a polygraph security interview.

He said they don’t share any information about the location of the training center or about the appearance of the instructors or cadets.

“Some of our employees may have relatives or acquaintances in occupied territories who could be tortured by Russians for indirect contact with someone who opposes Russia,” Pervak said. “This secrecy also protects the instructors and cadets themselves, as well as their relatives, from attacks by Russian agents.”

He said that while the added security “hinders publicity to some extent — good things should be spoken about loudly — war dictates its own conditions. We are well aware that failing to observe the principles of secrecy may result in the death of staff or cadets.”

Viktor Taran, the CEO of the Kruk Drones UAV training center, said that “Russia is interested in destroying us.”

“Thanks to God and air defence, we’re still operating.”