RUNNING for my life as I scanned the windswept slate-grey skies over Ukraine’s front line, I made one desperate last dash for cover. Panting as I plunged into the prickly hedgerow, I lay totally still and listened in dread for the fateful sound. Moments later it came — the spine- chilling banshee whine which has heralded the doom of thousands of soldiers in these killing fields.
![[Drone operating in Ukraine.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/68th-brigade-drone-unit-operating-966303496.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
But the screeching kamikaze drone hovering inches from my face would not be adding my name to the toll of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians killed in Vladimir Putin’s war. Because I was the quarry in a simulated drone hunt staged for The Sun yesterday by Ukraine’s elite front-line 68 Jaeger Brigade.
![[A soldier operating a drone.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/68th-brigade-drone-unit-operating-965823785.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
And though it wasn’t for real, it was still a deeply unnerving experience. I learned soon after that I had been hunted down by a drone pilot who has killed scores of Russians in the “meat grinder” war a few miles to the east. Tall, geeky and with a wispy ginger beard, the 29-year-old pilot — dubbed The Moderator — told me he was given the military call sign because of his job before the war.
![[Person walking toward bare trees in a field.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/369e67ab-3470-4288-86cb-3cd648e8839b.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
He said: “I used to work moderating comments left by people on websites to make sure nothing offensive went online. “Now I moderate Russians.”. The Moderator — who The Sun agreed not to identify fully — said he had lost count of the number of Putin soldiers his drones had dispatched in recent months.
![[A soldier operating a drone against Russian forces in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/68th-brigade-drone-unit-operating-966303488.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
