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Ramzan darts about his garage workshop with gleeful enthusiasm, showing off a small blue mortar bomb from “Holland or Poland”, a whopping thin-tailed, bulging-headed shell from America, Ukrainian bespoke high-explosive packed grenades and even an anti-tank mine – all for dropping on the heads of Russians.
A former infantry soldier, he has been at war for three years and says he misses the thrill of fighting up close, but, as the armourer for a four-man drone team flying an unmanned bomber in the National Guard’s Typhoon drone unit: “This is the best way to kill Russians.”
In a war of constant frontline improvisation, workshops like Ramzan’s garage – where he makes his own detonators and devises new types of incendiary bombs – have taken on the value of billion-pound industrial-military research centres in Nato countries.
Drone war was pioneered by self-funded Ukrainian soldiers adapting civilian toys to mortal effect.
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