In late February, a column of mobile Russian Buk surface-to-air missiles snake along a road near Malin, northwest of Kyiv, framed by looping tire-tracks in the surrounding earth. The black-and-white drone footage is slightly grainy, but the target is clear. The drone's camera shifts position slightly, rotating as its Ukrainian operators on the ground discuss the target. It hones in on a lone Buk in the center of the pack, like a predator picking off an unsuspecting gazelle from on high.

"He's running away from this Buk I think — or maybe to that side?" asks one drone operator, watching a black speck — a Russian soldier — on the screen. "Maybe something fell off and he went to check what it was. He's just running back and forth," says another, as the speck changes direction.

“Position” flashes at the top of the screen, before the Buk explodes into a voluminous cloud of black smoke. Applause and excited cheers break out in the control room. "Finally!" says one operator. "What fireworks," adds another.

The successful hit was one of a growing number of drone strikes conducted by the Ukrainian military against Russian targets using Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones. The footage, shared by the Ukrainian defense ministry and immediately spread online, has only come to enhance the idea of the drones stealthy power, sneakily bringing destruction to lines of Russian tanks or ammunition from afar and then displaying the grainy evidence for all to see. The Ukrainian embassy in Turkey tweeted footage of a Bayraktar TB2 exploding a column of Russian artillery in a white sparkling cloud alongside a phrase that roughly translated means “thank God for Bayraktar.”