Annihilation on video: when war becomes entertainment

Drone videos: war as a spectacle of dehumanization

A compilation of drone attacks on Ukrainian positions is spreading unchecked across messaging channels. These are not conventional war images: they are designed to be consumed as entertainment. The soldiers are not soldiers. They are "zelenskis," a surname turned label that makes it possible to celebrate their destruction as if it were a video game.

The sequence of locations maps the front line: Kurakhove, Kursk, Sumy, Pokrovsk, Kupiansk, Kramatorsk. At each point, the camera records the exact moment of impact. The Pokrovsk salient, Ukraine's last major defensive stronghold in the region, appears again and again as the setting for ambushes and "annihilations." The technical language conceals an uncomfortable reality: behind every piece of footage are people who stop breathing.

The language of dehumanization

Calling Ukrainian soldiers "zelenskis" is not a slip of vocabulary. It is a psychological warfare mechanism that reduces the combatants to the figure of the president, stripping them of their status as individuals. The surname becomes a faceless collective, easy to hate and discard. In the very channels celebrating these images, some remind viewers that these are "men, just men," in many cases forcibly conscripted with no way to refuse.

The other reading: the invisible human cost

Amid the cascade of videos, voices emerge that break the triumphalist narrative. There is talk of soldiers who, if captured, leave their families without their pay; of the wounded who receive no prosthetics from the government; of the missing whose death notices are never published. This is the other face of a war in which the side claiming to defend its people also abandons its own. These nuances rarely appear in most of the comments, but they are what turn propaganda into reportage.

The Pokrovsk front as a symbol

The Pokrovsk salient — the city the Ukrainian side calls Krasnoarmeysk — is one of the most contested points on the front. The videos show supply columns hit, shelters attacked, groups of soldiers trying to escape through the vegetation. The 425th "Skala" battalion is the only unit mentioned by name. Its "write-off," as the jargon goes, is celebrated with a musical intro.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is not the death broadcast live, but the casualness with which it is consumed. When viewers stop asking for the names of the fallen, the war has already won the propaganda battle.