Donated SUVs keep Ukraine fighting. Drones destroy 1,000 a month.

Callsign PhysEd was in the passenger seat of the SUV near the border with Kursk when a Russian FPV drone hit the front of the car. 

The driver was killed outright. The SUV was totaled. PhysEd managed to crawl from the wreckage with wounds in his arm, shoulder, and leg. 

After months in recovery, he regained the use of his limbs and returned to frontline service, which will require him to hop in another SUV and go again — provided the brigade can keep getting enough vehicles. 

"We are losing them every day, in big numbers," said the former fitness coach, who is now a drone operator with the 47th Mechanized Brigade. "The number of Russian drones hitting our logistics keeps increasing."

These SUVs and pickup trucks form the logistical backbone of the war, keeping units supplied and mobile across more than 1,000 kilometers of front line. Without other options, Ukrainian defenders have imported tens of thousands of civilian vehicles since the full-scale invasion began. Drone warfare has only accelerated the demand.

The same drones that can destroy a thousand vehicles in a month also force Ukrainian units to disperse, needing more vehicles to move the same number of troops. Armored vehicles are scarce and get destroyed just as quickly, as they often get closer to the front.

Volunteers reportedly supply 95% of this strained pipeline, sourcing donations, buying cars, and delivering them to front-line units. How long they can keep it running is unknown.

Why Ukraine needs more vehicles than ever

On the battlefields of Ukraine, “mechanized brigade” can be a bit of a misnomer. On paper, mechanized forces use armored vehicles to move around and fight. In practice, neither attackers nor defenders have nearly enough to cover the enormity of the front line.

Despite the fragility of civilian-grade vehicles pressed into frontline service, and the ever-expanding girth of the killzone, troops often have no other choice. According to interviews with multiple service members, the same reason that SUVs and pickup trucks are more vulnerable than ever also drives their growing demand: drone warfare. 

Drones can easily destroy both man and machine when given the opportunity. Clustering large numbers in the same location is a recipe for disaster. Units have to be much smaller and more spread out, to avoid being whittled down by the flying killers. 

But in order to spread out and remain mobile, the smaller teams need motorized transport in greater numbers. Civilian vehicles that can navigate bad roads are a highly-imperfect solution, but still one of the most practical, in terms of cost and availability.

"We have some vehicles in which 20 soldiers can drive somewhere. But that's stupid, because you can't concentrate more than three or four people in one place," said callsign Director, a filmmaker serving with a Rangers special forces unit. 

"Every small grouping that goes to the front lines, they are all the time looking for funding, looking for cars." 

For this, they rely heavily on volunteer drives that deliver thousands of SUVs, pickup trucks, and minibuses that are spread across Ukrainian brigades each year. 

But the rate at which these vehicles are being blown up may be even greater. Dimitri Nasennik, head of partnerships at the NAFO-sponsored Freedom Convoy MTÜ, said that 1,000 cars were lost in the previous month. When they aren’t destroyed outright, heavy use forces frequent repair jobs that are done out of volunteers’ or the soldiers’ own pockets. 

Ukrainian troops are being forced to adapt the nature of the missions and how the cars are used, to try to prevent losses. But the need for cars remains.

Volunteers keep the pipeline running

Western aid packages include missiles and artillery. The trucks that make them usable come from regular people.

Politico reported in May that 95% of the cars used by Ukraine’s armed forces are now sourced by volunteers. 

Sources interviewed by Euromaidan Press have struggled to come up with a total number of vehicles that Ukraine receives. Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Mischenko told that Ukraine receives thousands of such vehicles each year. 

As the former ambassador to Latvia, Mischenko said that in the first 3.5 years of the full-scale invasion, 6,500 SUVs, pickups, and minibuses arrived into Ukraine from Latvia alone. Vehicles also flow from other Baltic and Nordic states, the UK, and the Middle East.

As of October, one Norwegian volunteer group—Ukrainian Freedom Convoys—had delivered over 400 vehicles. Jan Ottessen, a volunteer with the group, estimated Norwegians have donated 1,500-2,000 vehicles in total.

In November, a drive by NAFO, Freedom Convoy MTÜ, passed 850 vehicles donated. Ukrainian writer Andriy Lyubka, who helps organize vehicle drives as well, also passed a 400 milestone in recent days. 

The costs run the gamut depending on how used the car is. Ottessen said his volunteer group was able to source cars for 3,000-4,000 euros, with dealer discounts. 

At a recent handover in Kyiv, Nasennik said the new vehicles being transferred to the troops that day cost around 20,000 euros apiece. 

“We're delivering trucks built in 2011 to 2019… this is the best ratio of price and quality,” Nasennik said. “But still they get pretty expensive and it's pretty miraculous — the luck, effort, and skills that we managed to keep up this fundraising.”

“Many times I heard this story like I was saying like oh this truck is 2013 and [a soldier] was looking at me like: are you kidding? Our newest truck is 2006."

How a donated car reaches the battlefield

The life of a car bound for the front typically begins at a vehicle lot somewhere in Europe. 

After being purchased, volunteers then take it to Ukraine as part of a batch, which often takes several days of nonstop driving, plus a bleary-eyed wait on the Polish border. The recent Norwegian convoy had to wait 11 hours there. 

Once they get into Ukraine, most cars typically go to Kyiv, where they are passed on to the units that have put in requests, sometimes after a small publicity event accompanying the handover. 

“There are lines and people can sign applications and get on the waiting list until their turn comes up,” Nasennik said. 

Other volunteer groups work more directly with specific units and try to distribute the cars based on those units’ needs. 

Once the troops get their cars, they often have to modify them by, for example, installing portable jamming hardware, which can cost $2,000, according to Nasennik. 

Other modifications are more extensive, like turning a minibus into a mobile armory. Many drones typically have to be adjusted in the field, to respond to rapidly-changing battlefield conditions. 

“You have to take a lot of equipment” for drone-related missions on the front lines. It’s solar panels, stations, bolts, extra batteries, and also mines of course,” Director said. “Even for small operations, you have to prepare for a long time and you need space and equipment. This car will not go straight to the front line, but it will come close.” 

The Russians target everything

Once the vehicles get to the front, it’s a roll of the cosmic dice if they last several months to need repairs, or if they get destroyed within their first week of operation. 

“We have trucks that are still fighting since 2022-2023,” said Volodymyr Dehtiaryov, a spokesman with the 13th Khartia Brigade. “And we also have cases when we give a truck and a unit reports like maybe a week later, it’s gone. It’s destroyed.”

PhysEd from the 47th Mechanized said that in his experience, the majority of vehicles are being lost to Russian attacks, rather than wear and tear. 

The rate of destruction also depends on how the cars are used. Many are used to rotate men and supplies to their forward positions, or at least get as close as possible. 

Because the Russian drone operators tend to prioritize logistical vehicles, the 47th is using more quad bikes to deliver smaller batches of supplies to forward positions. But the Russians have started to target these as well. 

“At least a year ago, those quad bikes were not priority targets, you know? But now they are,” he said. “The Russians can put two drones on a quad bike. It’s not a problem for them.

Meanwhile, Khartia is increasingly using unmanned ground vehicles, to try to minimize the cars’ exposure to enemy fire. 

“The Khartia corps is very careful about how jeeps are used. That's why the Brigade has not lost too many from direct hits,” said Dehtiaryov. “We have identified a distance” beyond which the cars cannot go. 

“Logistics runs to a point where it's relatively safe, then we switch to UGVs,” which can carry two or three tons, he added. 

Even armored vehicles can get destroyed by drones, about as readily as the cheaper civilian vehicles, an American soldier fighting for Ukraine, who has the callsign Herring, told Euromaidan Press.

Director said that, in fact, armored vehicles get destroyed even faster because of how much closer to the zero line they tend to get. 

The grind that wears them down

If a vehicle doesn’t get destroyed outright, the rough conditions on the front will quickly grind it down regardless. 

“It needs repair all the time. The roads are very difficult,” PhysEd said. “You have to drive fast under the drones, under the explosions, and the resource of the vehicle is decreasing very quickly.”

“So if you have only one car for your logistics, you are dead. Because you need at least two, three, or four, because two of them are always at the repair station.” 

According to Director, vehicles tend to need big repair jobs every three months, but something smaller comes up every month. 

“We need more because it's very sad when you’re on the frontline and you don't have enough cars,” he said. “The pressure of Russians is so huge that there are not enough cars, supplies, even food. Sometimes, guns.”

“The best thing would be to have a park of different cars… so when someone’s car is ruined, you can go pick up another one. In reality, you have to wait, I don’t know how many weeks or months for the next,” he added.

“When you do combat missions, it’s better not to have to think about fucking cars.”