Illya Sekirin
Volunteer turned frontline drone operator, now advising Ukraine's High Command — and the author of the "drone blitz".
theoristUkrainian High Command (Stavka), since early 2024
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Why they matter
When Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Illya Sekirin was running an IT business in Ukraine. Born there but naturalised Canadian — his father had gone to study in Canada, and Sekirin picked up citizenship and English along the way — he drove his girlfriend to central Ukraine and then went the other way, into Kyiv, past checkpoints where he was told not to come. He joined a volunteer battalion that took foreigners: about 100 to 120 men from the United States, the UK, Germany, Finland, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Poland, some veterans of the French Foreign Legion, some with nothing. Because he spoke Russian, Ukrainian and English he became the unit’s interpreter and fixer, and then its second-in-command. He never signed a contract. They gave him a rifle; he sold his car to buy his own helmet and plates.
The move to drones came almost by accident. Attached to a national guard detachment tasked with evacuating the wounded and recovering the dead, he sat through a short drone course and watched footage Ukrainian pilots had shot while spotting artillery with DJI Mavic 3 quadcopters. He signed up, and because instructors were scarce he was pushed onto an intensive course and sent out to teach frontline units by example — reconnaissance, artillery correction, grenade drops that did nothing to armour. He rotated between the front and home for the better part of two years, streaming video to headquarters and walking shells onto targets. Watching his unit dismantle the armour of an elite Russian formation in the Donbas, he began working out the arithmetic that would occupy him ever since: if a hundred pilots could break a narrow front, what could a thousand do?
That arithmetic became doctrine. Sekirin wrote the paper arguing that Ukraine’s unmanned systems needed their own service rather than a scattering of companies inside existing brigades — the paper that persuaded Volodymyr Zelensky to establish the Unmanned Systems Forces as a fourth branch of the armed forces, over visible irritation from commanders who preferred the old order of battle. He pushed the same case for brigade-sized drone formations, and by his own account waited a year for the answer to change from “we already have UAS companies” to “let’s do brigades” — a year, he argues, in which Ukraine gave away a first-mover advantage over Russia. Since early 2024 he has advised senior members of the High Command, having also worked as a researcher and translator for the General Staff.
His most consequential proposal never happened. In late January 2024 he submitted a plan to Stavka for what he called a massed drone attack, and now calls a drone blitz: thin the drone screen along the rest of the 1,000-km front to a defensive minimum, and secretly concentrate around 70 percent of Ukraine’s drone and electronic-warfare crews on a 30-km sector at Avdiivka, where Russia’s northern pincer had overextended itself. The local ratio would have been something like seventy to one, and under that cover the 3rd Assault Brigade would have driven into the pincer’s flank and 20 km into its rear instead of being fed into urban fighting. Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov spent hours talking Valerii Zaluzhny round. On 8 February 2024 Zelensky dismissed Zaluzhny, and his successor Oleksandr Syrskyi cancelled the counterattack and committed the reserves to holding the city. Avdiivka fell. Diluted versions of the concept surfaced later — at Kursk in 2024, and in a 2026 flank attack on the Russian Group of Forces “Vostok” — and Sekirin’s complaint about both is the same: spread too thin, over too wide a front.
He now makes the case in public. In December 2025 he spoke at the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research conference at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , to an audience that included the British Army’s Chief of the General Staff, and he appears regularly on defence podcasts and his own YouTube channel arguing that the drone is now the main striking power of a land army and everything else is subordinate to it. His book, Rise of the Machines: Drone Warfare in the Russia-Ukraine War , published by Helion in January 2026, sets out the tactics, operations and strategy alongside an account of his own deployments — written, he says, less for armies than for Western readers who have not yet grasped what a confrontation with Russia would look like.
Latest writings
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Ukraine's Long-Range Strikes are Hurting Russia. Now it Needs a Plan to Retake Territory
Fronts · 2026-08-11
The article text returned only a 404 error page from Fronts, with no actual reporting to summarize. The headline suggests a piece arguing that Ukraine's deep-strike campaign — likely involving long-range drones and missiles targeting Russian oil infrastructure, ammunition depots, and airfields — is imposing real costs on Moscow, but that attrition alone cannot translate into liberated territory without a corresponding ground-maneuver strategy. Readers interested in the interplay between unmanned long-range fires and conventional land operations, and in how Kyiv might convert strategic pressure into battlefield gains, would be the intended audience. Because the source page did not load its content, a faithful paraphrase of the specific claims, sourcing, or recommendations is not possible here. Anyone tracking Ukraine's evolving strike doctrine, the role of one-way attack drones in shaping Russian logistics, or debates over offensive planning for 2026 should open the original piece directly rather than rely on this placeholder.
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NATO Needs to Dronify or Die
Fronts · 2026-08-11
Ukrainian drone operator Illya Sekirin, an adviser to Kyiv's high command, makes the case that unmanned systems have fundamentally rewritten the terms of land warfare and that NATO has not yet reckoned with what that means. His argument, laid out in this Fronts piece, is that pervasive drone surveillance now renders the modern battlefield effectively transparent, turning any concentration of troops or armour into an easy target and making the massed formations Western doctrine still assumes largely unworkable. From that starting point, Sekirin contends that NATO's current procurement and spending on drones amounts to a token gesture, leaving the alliance years behind Russia's operational tempo and industrial output in unmanned systems. The piece will be of most use to defence planners, procurement officials, and analysts weighing how Ukraine's frontline experience should reshape Western force structure, doctrine, and industrial priorities around autonomy and cheap mass-produced drones. Much of the article sits behind a paywall.
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Europe Needs to Defend Itself Against Russian Aggression. Here's How.
Fronts · 2026-08-11
The article page returned a 404, so the piece itself is not available to review. Only the site's navigation shell, category menus, and boilerplate footer were retrievable at the given URL, which means no substantive content on European defence posture toward Russia can be summarised here. Readers looking for the argument — presumably a prescription for how European states should structure deterrence, force modernisation, or industrial mobilisation against Russian aggression — will need to locate a working link on the publisher's site, likely through its Defense or Analysis sections, or search its archive for the original title. Until the article is republished or the URL is corrected, its specific claims about troop levels, procurement priorities, integrated air and missile defence, long-range fires, or the role of unmanned and autonomous systems in a European deterrent posture cannot be characterised with any accuracy.
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A Russian Invasion of Latvia is a Terrifying Possibility. We Should Take it Seriously
Fronts · 2026-08-11
Illya Sekirin, a drone-warfare adviser to the Ukrainian High Command and author of Rise of the Machines, argues in Fronts that Moscow is preparing a summer drone offensive against the Baltic States as a way to outflank Ukraine strategically and force Europe to end its military support. He expects Latvia to be hit first, with elite Russian drone and counter-drone units quietly redeployed from Ukraine and massed on the elevated ground where the Russian, Latvian and Estonian borders meet, while Belarus stages a feint toward the Suwalki corridor to draw NATO's attention south. Sekirin contends that Western reliance on air power, armour and long-range precision fires is largely obsolete against dispersed drone operators who cannot be found from the air or from orbit, and that Riga could fall within days once the heights above it are seized. He urges NATO to invite Ukrainian drone brigades onto its eastern flank and rebuild its doctrine around drone-centric warfare. Useful reading for analysts tracking European deterrence, drone doctrine and Baltic security.
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Avdiivka: How Ukraine Came Close to Ending the War in 2024
Fronts · 2026-08-11
Ukrainian advisor Illya Sekirin recounts his early-2024 proposal for what he calls a "drone blitz" at Avdiivka: pulling roughly 70 percent of Ukraine's drone and electronic-warfare crews off the rest of the 1,000 km front and concentrating them on a 30 km sector to achieve a local superiority of about 70 to 1 against unsuspecting Russian operators. The 3rd Assault Brigade would have exploited the resulting drone crossfire to strike the flank of the Russian pincer closing on the city. Sekirin argues the manoeuvre was viable because drones neutralise traditional armoured concentrations while remaining themselves concentratable, and that a new Unmanned Systems Forces branch and brigade-to-army-sized drone formations were needed to command it. He blames Zelensky's dismissal of General Zaluzhny on 8 February 2024 and the Soviet-style rigidity of his successor Syrsky for cancelling the counterattack. Diluted versions surfaced later at Kursk and in a 2026 flank strike. Useful reading for anyone tracking drone doctrine, Ukrainian force structure, and NATO's preparedness for similar tactics.
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Avdiivka: How Ukraine Came Close to Ending the War in 2024
Fronts · 2026-04-20
Sekirin sets out the counterattack plan he submitted to Ukraine's High Command and General Staff on 31 January 2024, and argues it was the war's lost opportunity. Drone crews on both sides were then spread evenly along a 1,000-km front, a dispersal that made any traditional concentration of armour or infantry visible long before it could move. His answer was to concentrate the drones instead: leave a thin defensive screen elsewhere and secretly mass roughly 70 percent of Ukraine's drone and electronic-warfare units, some 700 crews, on a sector of up to 30 km at Avdiivka — a local correlation of forces of about seventy to one. Under that cover the 3rd Assault Brigade would have struck the overextended flank of the Russian northern pincer and pushed at least 20 km into its rear. The plan died on 8 February 2024, when Zelensky dismissed Zaluzhny and his successor Syrsky cancelled the counterattack; Avdiivka fell. Diluted versions appeared later at Kursk in 2024 and against the Russian Group of Forces "Vostok" in 2026. He closes with a warning that NATO has not reckoned with the idea.
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