Ukrainian intelligence is warning that a Russian Lancet drone is prowling the sky, loitering above Kramatorsk, like a heron poised over a fish pond, ready to strike.
A laptop shows multi-screen images of medics racing through shredded forest, Russian soldiers in Ukrainian sights, bunkers being blown up – of everyday terror.
This is the future of war – and the West isn’t ready for what may be coming in an open conflict with Russia: mass casualties and a transformation of the battle beyond anything that Nato’s armies are training for.
The laptop feed is for Rebekah Maciorowski, an American volunteer paramedic who runs the medical operations, evacuation and training for an entire battalion of men and women on Ukraine’s eastern front, under its 3rd Brigade. In a conventional war, she would be a major. In this conflict – she’s no idea what her rank is and cares even less.
But the revelations from this frontline soldier, one who has the rare claim to have shot down an incoming Russian drone attacking her patients, are chilling.
“You have had encounters with Nato training teams. You’ve talked to Nato when you’ve been back in Europe. Do you think that they’re ready for the next war with Russia?” The Independent asks her.
“No. No, I’m honestly a little bit terrified,” she replies – after more than 40 months at war here.
She goes on to explain: “If you were to talk to Nato military officials, they would reassure you that everything is under control, they’re well-equipped, they’re well-prepared. But I don’t think anyone can be prepared for a conflict like this. I don’t think anyone can.
“And what’s concerning to me is, while they’re offering training [in Europe for Ukrainians], I think it would do them well to also take some information and training from the Ukrainians.”
Maciorowski has undergone training with Nato forces in the last year and says what they taught was relevant to Afghanistan and Iraq – not Ukraine.
“When I went to train with Nato, the factor of drones was not really filtered in. It was very much the tactics that were learned in the previous war. And these tactics now do not apply because you’re not making a linear assault.
“Everything has changed with drones. And I don’t think it was factored in, at least not in this training,” she says in her secret medical evacuation headquarters.
Her teams evacuate wounded soldiers using quad bikes because armoured ambulances are now death traps, and quads can race between forests and dugouts trying to avoid drones.
But her team takes heavy losses. Over the last week a top medic, callsign Viking, was killed on a rescue mission east of Slaviansk. A few weeks before that, another driver was blown up by a drone.
