A disc-shaped object longer than the height of the Empire State Building emerged from the skyline of the besieged Ukrainian province of Donetsk last Friday, hovering eerily still a mile above the ground, a soldier told DailyMail.com.
That soldier, a drone operator, had cautiously guided his infrared quadcopter to 500 feet for a reconnaissance mission, battling high winds, when he suddenly saw the flat UFO, 1,300 feet long, remaining motionless despite those winds. .
In an interview from the war zone, the soldier, who belongs to the Ukrainian army’s 406th Battalion, said he and his fellow soldiers had “never seen things like this before.”
And he added: ‘At first I thought it was something new invented by the Russians, but then I understood… ‘No! “It could be (a) UFO.”
The ‘ship’ was between 36 and 54 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than any other object he had tracked in the war zone, ruling out atmospheric phenomena, balloons and known enemy aircraft, he said.
‘Why isn’t it moving?’ Troops from the Ukrainian 406th Battalion can be heard debating as they witness a large UFO hovering, dead calm, over their war zone.
The ‘ship’ was 36 to 54 degrees hotter in Fahrenheit than any other object it has tracked in the war zone, ruling out atmospheric phenomena, balloons and known enemy aircraft, the Ukrainian military drone operator (above) told DailyMail .com through an interpreter.
“We were surprised, very surprised,” the soldier, whose given name is Vadym, recalled through an interpreter.
But Vadym told DailyMail.com that this “surprise” wasn’t entirely fear, because he and his fellow soldiers have learned to suppress those emotions amid their effort to defend Ukraine from a two-year-old Russian invasion.
“We got scared on February 24, 2022,” Vadym said. “After that, we are no longer afraid of anything.”
The 406th’s drone pilot said he had brought his craft within “a few kilometers” of his reconnaissance mission before spotting the UFO.
“I looked to the right and saw this,” Vadym said.
‘After 30 seconds, we decided to film it. All the emotions we had at that moment, they’re in the video… You can hear it.’
As Vadym and his teammates from Unit 406 struggled to make sense of the apparent object, their confusion is palpable in the 17-second video, shared exclusively with DailyMail.com this week.
Between the profanity (“Holy crap”) and the excitement (“What the fuck is this?”), a battalion member asks, “Why aren’t you moving?”
Another wonders: ‘Why can’t he fire missiles at us? What do you mean?’
Aside from the object’s unusual heat signature, it seemed to withstand the strong wind more easily, but Vadym told DailyMail.com that no other extreme weather could help explain the unusual sighting.
“There was a very strong wind,” Vadym said. “The wind was basically blowing in the same direction we were flying.”
“But (the UFO) just stayed in the same place and the sky was clear,” he said. “So there are no clouds, nothing.”
“We were surprised, very surprised,” recalled the soldier, whose given name is Vadym, adding that this “surprise” wasn’t exactly fear: He and his fellow soldiers (above) learned to suppress those emotions while defending Ukraine from attack. Two-year Russian invasion
Ukraine’s 406th Battalion (right) received its DJI-branded Mavic 3T commercial thermal imaging drone (left) thanks to the fundraising efforts of the DeepInspire Foundation, war correspondent Joe Lindsley, who directs the center media Lviv Lab, and other humanitarian activists.
“I use this filter (infrared, thermal vision) very often,” said the unit’s drone operator, “and I just gained experience being able to differentiate how bright an object should be based on what temperature.”
Based on that experience, Vadym stated that the UFO was “very hot.” I guess about 20 to 30 degrees (Celsius) warmer than other objects.
Vadym estimated that the approximately 400 meters (1,300 ft) long UFO was also about 100 meters (328 ft) tall.
It was captured by the camera of a commercial DJI brand thermal imaging drone on February 23, 2024.
The possible craft, detected around 9:02 p.m. local time, appeared to be approximately 37 to 40 miles away from the soldiers, he said, toward Donetsk Oblast, the southeastern province of Ukraine that has been most dominated by Russian forces.
Vadym requested that his last name and other key details of the encounter not be revealed for operational security reasons amid the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) effort to repel the Russian invasion.
A spokesperson for Mavic manufacturer DJI told DailyMail.com that while it could not help explain what is present in the UFO images, equipment error could have played a role.
But he noted that while “it’s hard to count” how many times he has personally flown his unit’s drone, the Mavic 3T, it was probably “more than 10,000 times.”
“We’ve seen different things (in the sky),” he said, adding, “We’ve never seen things like this before.”
One possible explanation for the UFO was the well-known optical illusion phenomenon called ‘Fata Morgana’, a mirror-like atmospheric mirage produced by a ‘temperature inversion’ of hot air in the upper atmosphere.
But Vadym insists that what he saw was real.
“It wasn’t a mirage,” Vadym told DailyMail.com, “because in thermal vision you can’t see a mirage.” You can only see it with the naked eye.’
He went on to explain that the object did not ripple, glow or alter its shape, which would have been a telltale sign of a Fata Morgana mirage.
“Often a Fata Morgana changes rapidly,” as the flight safety guide says SKY Library grades. ‘The mirage is made up of several inverted (face down) and upright (face up) images stacked on top of each other.
But according to Vadym, “the object was in a stable form.” It was not moving.
That said, the UFO, whatever it was, wasted no time in abandoning its position over Donetsk.
“In another position, we had another drone and we placed it in about three minutes,” Vadym said, “(but) they didn’t see it (the UFO) at that time.”
“When we returned to the same position later, there was nothing there.”
The member of unit 406 also relayed his recollection that the UFO did not ripple, glow or alter its shape, which would have been a telltale sign of a Fata Morgana mirage.
In a photographic case of Fata Morgana, the Anthem of the Seas cruise ship, a 168,000-ton Royal Caribbean liner, appeared to float on water.
Last Tuesday, a spokesperson for Mavic manufacturer DJI told DailyMail.com that, while it could not help explain what is present in the 406th UFO footage, a team error could have played a role.
But Vadym said he was confident the Mavic 3T’s systems were functioning normally at the time of the UFO encounter.
The red “warning” or “error” bar visible at the top left of the drone’s screen, he said, is related to the consumer drone’s GPS navigation.
“It’s a warning that we were flying without satellites with 100 percent manual controls,” Vadym told DailyMail.com.
‘Because Russia does everything possible to deny Ukrainians the possibility of flying over and understanding (…) its plans.’
Vadym noted that similar combat-specific issues prevented the battalion from storing a recording of the UFO’s thermal images directly on the Mavic drone.
“We remove memory cards from drones when we fly over enemy territories,” Vadym said.
“There is a risk that if we lose a drone due to enemy electronic countermeasures, they could pick up the drone, pick up the card and read what’s there.”
When asked again how he and his comrades from the 406th Battalion felt about the UFO, Vadym said: “The best thing I could say is that so that this video never happened, so that we (the Ukrainian military) never We have to do the same.” work we do.’
In a better world, Vadym said, the February 2022 Russian invasion “never happened” and “we just use civilian drones to film weddings.”