Fighting Russia from a distance: Inside a Ukrainian drone school

"I lost count after 100," the 44-year-old, camouflage-clad instructor told Al Jazeera while observing three cadets of his drone flight school pilot their buzzing aircraft over a withering meadow just outside Kyiv. Sitting at a plastic table littered with tools and batteries, the cadets with their joysticks and goggle cameras looked geeky and harmless. During their Saturday morning drill, each of them took turns flying a drone whose camera allows first-person views of the flight. Time after time after time, the cadets learned how to manoeuvre their drones by flying them through two loops stuck into the wet ground. The drones often fell with a whiz after touching a loop or a bush, losing a red plastic propeller or a leg that had to be found in the wet grass and reattached.