Businessman evaded the military service but then formed UAV company

In the 1990s, Oleksii Orel followed his grandfather's advice to “evade the army” and bribed himself out of military service.

However, in the first days of the large-scale invasion, he volunteered for the Lviv Territorial Defense and went to fight in the east at the first opportunity. There he joined the Luhansk brigade of the Territorial Defense, with which he began his combat career. In the first months, Orel saw the effectiveness of drones and decided to master UAVs. Soon he became the commander of a company of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Read more about how he formed the company, how he selected fighters, why his 18-year-old subordinates are eager to fight, the hard everyday life of pilots, and how drones are changing the war.

Kurkuls from Chukotka

Oleksii Orel was born into a Russian-speaking family in the city of Izium. At the age of 20, he switched to Ukrainian completely. It didn't happen overnight — it all started with studying his own family history.

When he was a child, he saw in his mother's documents the place of her birth — the village of Mama in the Chukotka region. When he was a teenager, he began to wonder what kind of village it was and where it was located.

“It turns out that my mother's parents were forcibly deported to Chukotka because they were ‘kurkuls’. And my grandmother died there because of the harsh conditions,” Oleksii tells his mother's story.

There was nothing but an ore mine in the village of Mama. When the family returned to Ukraine, they were not allowed to live in their home village, so they moved to another one in western Ukraine.

Oleksii’s father had an equally tragic story. His mother was forcibly deported to Germany during World War II. There she met her future husband, who was a Soviet prisoner of war. After the fall of the Reich, the family returned to Ukraine, but to avoid being sent to a Soviet concentration camp, they had to live apart for some time.

This knowledge shaped Oleksii's anti-Russian views. When his relatives from Russia came to visit them for the summer, they were offended that he spoke Ukrainian with them.

Two three-liter cans of paint were used to bribe him out of the army

In 1996, Oleksii Orel graduated with honors from a vocational school in Izium. Then he decided to enter a military university in Kharkiv. Not because he wanted to be a military man, but for practical reasons: the cadets were fully state-supported. 3.5 people were applying for one place. His parents were told to give a bribe, but the boy passed the exams on his own.

“I passed Ukrainian, but I did not pass math. Although I helped most of the group solve problems at the math exam,” says Orel.

Orel did not enter the university, but he was not upset. During the exams, he felt the atmosphere of the Soviet army with formations, evening inspections, and a drunken officer.

“I looked at that officer and said to myself: maybe it's good that I didn't enter, that I won't be like him. I entered a technical school, and then life went on as usual. And the next time when I faced the prospect of becoming a military man, of being drafted for military service, I bribed myself out of it. Two three-liter cans of paint got me out of the army,” Oleksii recalls with a smile.

It was his grandfather who convinced him to evade the army. He went through World War II, couldn't be demobilized for a long time, and got out of the army only because he was studying at a university. And then he got to another war, the Korean War, as part of the so-called “Soviet aid”.

“He said many things that I, a boy of 16-18, did not understand. Why I should evade, why the Soviet government was evil. It was only with time that I understood everything,” Oleksii recalls his conversations with his grandfather.

A businessman goes to war

It was then that Orel moved from Izium to Lviv. He got a job in a construction company. He started as an ordinary worker, but in 10 years he was already managing all the processes. At some point, he decided to work for himself and set up a full-cycle facade glazing business, from production to turnkey delivery to the client. His company employed fifteen people.

On February 24, 2022, Oleksii woke up in terror before 4 am. He dreamt that he was slaughtering people like pigs. He couldn't fall asleep anymore. And as soon as he picked up the phone, he was inundated with messages about the start of a large-scale invasion.

At 7 am, Oleksii tried to leave for work. All the streets of Lviv were already blocked by traffic. He returned home, told his employees to stay home, took his Rover, and headed to the military registration and enlistment office.

“I spent two days in lines at the military enlistment office. First, they took reservists. On the second day, they signed me up and said they would take me. But the next day, they called and asked if I could give them my vehicle,” Orelrecalls the first days.

He drove his Renault Master bus to the military unit himself. On the same day, he was finally enlisted in the Lviv Territorial Defense unit as a cook.

“I have nothing to do with the kitchen. There were just no vacancies, so I was signed up. I thought at the time that it didn't matter who I was registered as. In any case, you will be useful somewhere,” Orelrecalls his first formal position in the army.

While the man was getting used to the army, his hometown of Izium came under occupation. His mother and younger sister stayed there.

“The information about the occupation of Izium also had an emotional impact on me. Someone was taking away my home, something dear to me,” says Oleksii.

The first combat

In early April 2022, Orel volunteered to go to the east. There he became a rifleman of the Luhansk Territorial Defense. His first combat mission was to the town of Pryvillia.

“On the first night, the f*ckers met us with Grad MLRS shelling. They were hitting our base. I felt really scared. Then I remembered my grandfather's words and realized what he had told me in my youth. The next day we went to the line we were supposed to hold,” Oleksii recalls his baptism of fire.

Orel's unit was regularly shelled with artillery. At some point, an enemy sniper appeared on the other side of the Siverskyi Donets.

“One of ours was saved by a dog. It stood in front of the guy and caught his bullet. Before that, I hadn't smoked for more than 15 years. And that day I smoked. The first losses were very hard to accept,” says Orel.

His unit's first combat deployment to the Luhansk region lasted 72 days. On the last day, the shelling lasted for an hour and a half continuously. Then Oleksii got a concussion. When the Luhansk Territorial Defense unit was brought back to the field, Orel decided to learn to fly a UAV.

“Back in Pryvillia, our fighter came up to me and said: ‘Teach me how to fly a drone.’ I replied that I didn't know how to do it yet. He offered to learn together. We started with the trial and error method. We didn't know what an anonymized UAV was yet, that the drone could be ‘visible’ to the enemy. Once, we took off in such a way that after landing, they started firing at us with mines,” Orelrecalls how he started “flying”.

In the late summer of 2022, Luhansk Territorial Defense fighters were assigned to the 25th Airborne Brigade, and a counteroffensive was being prepared in the Kharkiv region.

“We were assigned to a paratrooper aerial reconnaissance group. At first, they treated us so arrogantly, since they were airborne assault troops, and here comes some territorial defense. But after a week they started treating us as equals. We showed them some things elementary for us, civilians, and they showed us combat moments. And this duo had a very positive result. In the end, this counteroffensive became a kind of exam into adulthood for us,” Orelrecalls his cooperation with the paratroopers.

After a successful operation, the paratroopers were sent back to recover, and the territorial defense was left to repel enemy attacks.

“Two weeks later, I met the chief of the 25th Brigade, and he said: ‘You know, Oleksii, I was most afraid that evening would come and I would get a call to get ready because the territorial defenses had been breached. Thank you for giving us two and a half weeks to rest.” We also learned from radio intercepts that the f*ckers could not believe that the territorial defense was holding. They thought that some special forces had come in because we were repelling the assaults every day,” says Orel.

Formation of the company of striking unmanned aerial vehicles

Soon after, Orel was promoted to junior lieutenant and headed a company of unmanned aerial vehicles. He began to involve civilians in the service. He started recruiting with his friends and guided them through all stages of mobilization. Even 18-year-old boys and girls came to them.

Almost everyone was taught to fly from scratch. To do this, the training base with equipment (quadcopters, computers, FPV simulator, Starlink) was organized. Then recruits were sent to training centers to get the appropriate certificates and military specialty. In general, the officer's experience in organizing a business helped him to form the company.

Orel notes that aerial reconnaissance is over-publicized, and many people have the impression that being a pilot is cool and easy. Oleksii warns that this assessment is wrong.

“It looks like it's cool to be an aerial reconnaissance officer, like it's a simple job, sitting somewhere and flying a drone. In reality, it's not that easy. After working all day, you arrive at the location with one desire — to rest. Both to rest physically, because you are constantly in armor and to give your eyes a rest, because they have been in tension all day,” explains the commander of the company of striking unmanned aerial vehicles.

The effectiveness of UAV pilots is evident not only in the destroyed enemy equipment but also in the change in enemy behavior, explains Orel. After the appearance of aerial reconnaissance drones in one section of the front, the Russians quickly changed their tactics: tanks no longer moved to the front lines, vehicles with ammunition and food tried to unload as quickly as possible and return to the rear, and infantry avoided appearing in open territory. In other words, the very presence of Ukrainian drones instills fear in the enemy.

“War is moving into the realm of technology. Whoever owns technology owns the world. This is the future. In fact, we are already seeing a partial war of robots. Someday, it will be machines, not people, who will fight. This is still a long way off, but since the beginning of 2022, we have seen great progress in this direction. The next stage is the use of artificial intelligence for targeting,” thecommander reflects.

Dreams for the time “after the war”

Oleksii Orel dreams of returning home, marrying off his daughters, and living in the new house he finished building just before the large-scale invasion. He realizes that all this will not happen tomorrow. That he may have to fight for a few more years. After the war is over, he will go to the theater with his wife.

“It doesn't matter what kind of theater, whether famous actors will play there, the main thing is a good performance. I like this art. In the movies, you can reshoot a take, but here the actor has to play his role from one take from start to finish without a break.”

The material was prepared in cooperation with the public relations service of the Territorial Defense Forces Command as part of the Winged Squadron recruitment and training program for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).