How European fishing nets are protecting Ukraine’s troops from drone attack ...Middle East

Aid groups helping Ukraine are scouring Europe for fishing nets to protect soldiers from Russian drone attacks.

Around 200 lorries have transported up to 4,000 tonnes of netting to the front line from countries including the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and France since the summer of 2024, with one truck due to leave the UK this week.

Drones have become the deadliest type of weapon in the Ukraine war, and are now causing around 70 per cent of all Ukrainian and Russian casualties.

As well as covering trenches and foxholes, recycled fishing nets are now forming protective tunnels on supply routes to shelter troops and vehicles, a tactic first used by Russian forces in the Battle of Bakhmut.

But a surge in demand for nets as drone warfare increases has seen ports around the Continent emptied of them as Ukrainian groups scramble for more supplies.

Katarzyna Bylok, founder of Aid Ukraine UK, an umbrella group of organisations, said the amount of nets needed for defence is “huge”.

She told The i Paper: “There is a serious shortage of old fishing nets on the front line and this leads to more deaths and injuries.

“Since 2024, FPV [First-Person View] drones are absolutely destroying the front line and attacking and killing anything that moves – from elderly citizens on bicycles, to civilian cars, evac crews, ambulances and of course the military.

“The nets stop the FPVs and anything the drone drops. We ourselves and the 17 brigades we work with in the Donbas can take any amount of nets at the moment.

“There simply aren’t any and everyone is looking. Brigades are constantly looking for possible supply routes.”

A surge in “absolutely deadly” fibre-optic drones that can bypass electronic jamming had turned some aid drops into “suicide missions”, she said.

One brigade they work with has lost 14 of its 15 evacuation vehicles to drone attacks in the past couple of months.

The Russians were also now using “mother drones” that can travel further before dropping smaller FPV kamikaze drones, she said.

“There’s no point getting expensive vehicles because they just keep getting blown up,” she said.

“Now the range is increasing, and of course it’s affecting supply lines, it’s affecting evacuations. So having the nets and having corridors covered with the nets becomes essential.”

In 2024, a British group called Pickups for Peace transported five or six tonnes of netting from the Scottish fishing industry to protect electricity infrastructure in Lviv.

Bylok urged British port authorities and fisheries to contact them about sending more nets. Funding is also an issue with sponsorship needed for transport costs to Ukraine.

One photo showed the aftermath of a drone attack on a military car in the Donetsk Oblast front line which killed three of the four soldiers from the 5th Assault Brigade who were inside.

“If the car had a welded cage with anti-drone fishing net around it those soldiers would have stood a chance. They might have survived,” she said.

Dmytro, 29, a Ukrainian special forces soldier in Donbas, said troops are most vulnerable to drone attacks while driving to and from the front line on evacuations or supply runs.

“When you are in position, you are almost safe because you’re underground,” he said.

“But to drive to position you are an easy target. We are trying to cover the road to the position with these nets. It’s the cheapest way.”

Corridors from the front line that are 8km or 9km (5.6m) long must be covered with more than 200,000 square km (2.2m sq ft) of nets, he said.

The number of lorries arriving with nets has increased from around one every couple of months last year to one a week this year.

But he said: “It will never be enough. The Russians also use drones for burning nets. We have much more drone [attacks] compared with last year.”

The shift in the war towards more drones had seen firefights with the Russians become less frequent.

Friends in foundations in Ukraine told him they were searching for nets all over Europe and beyond.

“But for now, more countries are empty with nets, because it is really popular on the front line,” he said.

In a message to the British fishing industry, he said: “To save the lives of soldiers, to make evacuations more safe, to help Ukrainian soldiers protect the trenches and their position, to protect Ukraine lands please send to us more nets.”

Otto Jelsma, a former soldier from the Netherlands leading the hunt for fishing netting around Europe, estimates he has helped organised around 2,000 tonnes of nets from Holland and Denmark.

By June 2024, his NGO Heaven’s Shield had shifted 300 tonnes of recycled netting, but that has ramped up to 1,000 tonnes since January.

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His first truck from the UK is being loaded in the Devon area this week. “We want to empty all of Europe,” he said.

Once sourced, nets used for North Sea trawlers as well as those for inland fishing are being trucked across the continent to be reused in the wartorn country.

“Some can stop a Shaheed. The fishing nets from the normal fishing line that type they [the drones] don’t see. They fly in it, and they don’t explode,” he said.

“If you got a message from a boy that’s the same age as your son thanking you for giving a net to his dad who survived twice because of that net we delivered that hits hard.”

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