Mid-range strikes go in first. How the commanders of CODE 9.2 and the 1st Separate Assault Regiment are changing the way assault troops operate

On a large flat-screen monitor, once designed by someone, somewhere, for watching the evening news and TV series, a vast, slightly yellow field is clearly visible.

Every now and then, it is "cut through" by tree lines, small tarmac roads and the distant outlines of villages. But overall, the picture is monotonous and unlikely to interest anyone who does not know what they are looking at. There is no sound coming from the television either.

Instead of the news, it is showing a live feed from the camera of a Ukrainian mid-range attack drone called Darts.

Right now, it is flying over the Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast towards the Tokmak-Melitopol road, one of three key routes for Russian forces on this front.

This is the first indication of how the war has changed in 2026: an assault regiment, rather than a specialised drone unit, has a UAV capable of flying 50, 100 or even 150 km beyond the line of contact. Previously, the range was 10-35 kilometres. And even 150 km is not its maximum range.

The drone is flying into a strong headwind, making small, jerky movements as it sways from side to side.

"This Darts is like a cow," a serviceman named Serhii, staring at the screen, tells Ukrainska Pravda, commenting on the drone's manoeuvrability.

"And it is easy for the enemy to shoot down. We once had a situation where they [the Russians] spotted our drone, stopped and, instead of scattering in different directions as they normally do, drove after the drone. There was nothing we could do, so we flew towards another target," adds his comrade-in-arms, Vitalii, chief of the operations section at the headquarters.

Despite its shortcomings, Darts is currently one of Ukraine's most popular mid-range drones, offering an optimal balance between cost and effectiveness.

Serhii is sitting behind a monitor at a deeply dug-in command post belonging to the 1st Assault Regiment in the south of the country. He serves as a digital officer, making sure his unit makes full use of all available digital tools, including the Delta situational-awareness system. The 1st Assault Regiment has four such specialists in this role.

Before becoming a digital officer, Serhii spent four years serving in an anti-tank company. There are now practically no tanks on the battlefield, so the knowledge and skills he acquired in his original role have largely lost their relevance.

This is the second indication of how the war has changed in 2026 – and how the Ukrainian armed forces are adapting to those changes.

"One of our drones has just been shot down. I'll fill in the flight report [in Delta] and the information will immediately appear on the relevant map layer. Then an analyst will see that several drones have been lost in this area and will adjust the route accordingly," Serhii explains, describing one of his functions.

Meanwhile, on the monitors next to him, operators continue tracking mid-range drones that have managed to break through Russian air defences. There can be five to seven aircraft in the air at the same time.

An hour later, when the commander of the 1st Assault Regiment, "Perun", arrives at the command post, we learn that none of these drones are flying at random.

They are part of an operation by Ukraine's defence forces in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, carried out by the recently established Multidomain Operations Centre of the 1st Assault Regiment and the 475th Regiment CODE 9.2. The operation is called Phalanx.

How have assault units started using mid-strikes in combination with offensive operations? Why did they decide to join forces under Phalanx? And what results are their operations producing? Read on in this report from Ukrainska Pravda.

How mid-range strikes began

The idea of writing about Phalanx emerged at Ukrainska Pravda more by chance than by design. Until just a few weeks ago, we did not even know that the centre existed.

While reporting from the Zaporizhzhia front, we travelled to the 1st Assault Regiment, which had recently begun working with mid-range drones, to see what that looked like in practice – and, most importantly, whether it was having a real, measurable impact on the line of contact.

Some of our sources, after all, were still convinced just a month ago that the effect was zero. Hundreds of strikes had hit vehicles and fuel tankers, they argued, yet the Russian advance towards the line of contact had not slowed.

The commander of the 1st Assault Regiment, Perun, arrived at the command post at around 11:00, coffee from a petrol station in hand, and opened his meeting with Ukrainska Pravda with an introductory statement. He began with the vision that has increasingly become the subject of mockery on Facebook since the departure of Mykhailo Fedorov: where are the glossy presentations, people ask, and where is the line of contact?

Perun said that just a few months earlier, his unit had had "short arms" – it could only reach the Russians no more than 30 km beyond the line of contact. That was not enough.

Here is Perun speaking:

"At some point, we came to the conclusion that dominance in the low-altitude airspace is key to modern warfare.

There is the line of contact, whose width depends on the season. In summer, it is wider because there are tree lines and vegetation and soldiers can fight at distances of 10-15 metres. In winter, it is narrower: people generally do not engage in small-arms firefights and someone sitting on the line of contact becomes more of a sitting duck on the battlefield.

And then there is the sky – that line is completely different.

We can now see that on our side of the front, the area extending 20 km back from the line of contact is already exposed to risks. From 0 to 5 km, it is an intense-strike zone. From 5 to 15, it is a logistics-isolation zone. From 15 to 20, it is an area that is not under constant attack but is under constant surveillance. Yet even if you are more than 20 km from the line of contact, you drive your car holding your breath.

The enemy is in roughly the same situation.

And we came to the conclusion that we need to expand the zone in which the enemy is afraid to breathe to 150 km.

Since 2025, we have been pushing this idea out into the wider military community. The first person to give us feedback on it was Mykhailo Albertovych [Fedorov], who had just become minister. He helped us try to put the idea into practice.

At first, we started increasing the number of heavy bombers and then we began developing a vision for isolating transport logistics. Unfortunately, that vision is now starting to lose momentum. That was the foundation for the multidomain centre that Flint [commander of the 475th Assault Regiment CODE 9.2, whom we profile below] and I created."

Until the Multidomain Operations Centre was established in summer 2026, each unit had operated in its own section of the front and at its own pace.

The CODE 9.2 Assault Regiment was the first – or perhaps one of the first in Ukraine among non-specialised units – to start using mid-range strikes.

Ukrainska Pravda travelled to Kharkiv Oblast to meet its commander, Flint, where his regiment was just finishing one of its multidomain operations (which we will return to below).

He recalls that his regiment launched its first mid-range strikes back in late 2025, during the Kupiansk operation.

This gave us a better understanding of why that operation – particularly in the forest above Kupiansk, where CODE 9.2 and the 92nd Assault Brigade were operating – was successful.

Here is Flint speaking:

"During the Kupiansk operation, we used mid-range strikes for the first time at a tactical level to support assault operations.

We captured a key forest, the one right down by the river, without any '200s' or '300s' – [military slang for personnel killed or wounded]. Twenty-four of our men cleared a forest where there were about 50 enemy troops. The enemy was so disoriented by the strikes from [Ukrainian defence company] Fire Point [drones]... they did not understand what was happening at all. That gave us an advantage.

"Where did we get Fire Point in 2025? Denys Shtilerman [co-founder of Fire Point] gave them to us – I called him and asked. I said I needed to do something... Anton Herashchenko introduced us. Shtilerman is all about the war, about victory. If I called him now and asked for 50 Fire Point drones, he would give them to me.

Our main drones now are Darts and Fire Points.

How did we come to the conclusion that operations should be conducted this way, using mid-range strikes? It was through pure practical experience – our instinct for self-preservation kicked in. We wanted to control the battlefield not for 20 km, but for 100."

At the beginning of 2026, the 1st and 475th Assault Regiments were included in a list of 20 units that received additional funding to develop their mid-range strike capabilities.

The initiative to allocate the money – albeit in a risky way, by taking it from a budget earmarked for servicemen's salaries at the end of the year – came from the team of the then Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. The sum amounted to hundreds of millions of hryvnias.

"Everyone says that Mykhailo Albertovych is only interested in drones. Well, that's not true. With this money, we bought FPV drones, reconnaissance aircraft and even radios that the infantry lacked as well as signal repeaters and pickup trucks. This was money for developing the unit," Perun says.

After receiving the additional funding, Perun's 1st Assault Regiment used a large-scale testing process to purchase mid-range drones including Darts, Fire Point, Kotyhoroshkos, Shpatels, Batons and a small number of Hornets. According to the servicemen we spoke to, there are long queues for the latter.

All of them were deployed against Russian logistics and critical infrastructure targets.

The creation of Phalanx and its first operations

The history of the Phalanx multidomain operations centre begins with how Perun and Flint first met.

They first crossed paths in 2022, during the Kharkiv offensive operation. At that time Perun was fighting in the 67th Brigade, whilst Flint was in the 92nd. Both were commanders of small units.

Recalling those times, Perun shows UP journalists an archive video on his phone. In it, in full kit and with a rifle in his hands, he and a fellow soldier are making their way through a ravaged autumn tree line in order to clear it of the enemy.

He keeps in touch with Flint over the radio.

"It was like this: we had carried out our part of the mission, then they went in (Flint's unit – UP) – and they were badly defeated. They suffered losses. I made a suggestion to him, saying: 'Sania, let us go in and do it for you.' We went in, cleared the area, and after that we have had a very warm, friendly relationship," Perun says.

This spring the two assault regiments met in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. In May they carried out their first joint operation, reaching all the way to the Crimean bridges, and a couple of months later they finally decided that they would work together as part of a multidomain centre called Phalanx.

What follows are Perun's own words:

"We discussed at length how the war needs to be waged so that it is as effective as possible for our country. We came to the conclusion that fighting in only one domain makes no sense. We'd simply lose because the enemy would bring another domain into play.

For example, there is the infantry – that is one element, there is low-altitude airspace and drones – that's the second, then the third is artillery and the fourth is cyberspace.

We tried to approach this philosophically. We examined the strengths and weaknesses of each domain, sketched out a plan for ourselves of what we could achieve with the resources currently available, not some imaginary ones.

We went through them in order, starting with the first domain – people; that is, the soldier and his support. We have made fundamental changes inside our units in the deployment of infantry.

For example, thanks to UGVs and drops from drones, we have brought our soldier's kit down to 10 kg. Our soldier can now get what he wants at a position – including a pack of red Marlboros – within 10 minutes (delivered to him by a bomber – UP). We do not merely budget for these costs, we write this into our infrastructure and the way we plan combat operations.

Or take this example from the "cyberspace" domain. We can afford to adjust artillery fire using their messenger app (this refers to hacking the enemy's social media accounts – UP). The company commander shouts: "Sh*t, that was close." We keep working on him further.

In other words, the word "multidomain" in the name of the joint centre for the two Separate Assault regiments means that their assault operation will be accompanied by a massed launch of mid-range strike drones, by artillery (Flint, for instance, actively uses Grad MLRS despite the kill zone), by intrusion into the enemy's cyberspace and so on. And ultimately this is meant to lead to the liberation of a defined portion of territory.

All the planning is based on the intersection of several domains across both units simultaneously.

However, not all the units from the CODE 9.2 regiment and the 1st Separate Assault Regiment were included in Phalanx. Some servicemen whom UP spoke with outside official meetings mentioned that for reasons unknown to them they had not had the opportunity to work in the new multidomain centre. And to a certain extent this has given rise to conflicts inside the regiment.

The name of the Phalanx centre comes from the Macedonian phalanx – a dense battle formation where soldiers carried extremely long spears, sarissas, in their hands. The length of a sarissa was 4-5 metres and, most importantly, it struck the enemy without letting them get close. Roughly speaking – a hand-held mid-range strike on a budget.

The first multidomain operation carried out by Phalanx, which we have already mentioned above, involved the bridges to Crimea.

In the regiments this operation is called an experiment. Not everything worked out the first time, they say: in some places. things were damaged rather than destroyed outright, in others the drones were shot down by the Russians.

They were prompted to carry out this experiment by an intercepted conversation involving one of the Russian commanders. He was saying that because of Ukrainian drone attacks on the roads in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast he had to transport fuel all the way via Crimea.

"We found this out, and so we paid attention to that sector. For which we were subjected to a whole heap of investigations (by the then commander-in-chief Syrskyi – UP), saying I was guilty of making decisions single-handedly. But it all had a very good effect: within three weeks, all the units working on the isthmus and the roads towards Berdiansk and Melitopol had destroyed some 700 pieces of equipment," Perun says.

The period of the strikes on the Crimean bridges and, accordingly, the weakening of Russian supply at the front line at that time, Perun continued, was used by the 1st Separate Assault Regiment to advance to the north of Huliaipole, towards such settlements as Rybne and Uspenivka.

This is a prime example of the effect produced by the use of mid-range strikes.

Phalanx carried out its second operation in Kharkiv Oblast.

At the time of our arrival in Kharkiv to meet with Flint, CODE 9.2 had just cleared Kozacha Lopan – another village near the border through which the Russians had been infiltrating.

For the effective clearance of this sector, CODE 9.2, together with other units, blocked the enemy's logistics routes in Belgorod Oblast, knocked out a dam and destroyed bridges. In this way the enemy, while responding to the Ukrainian attacks, was unable to deploy reserves to this sector.

"We carried out a big operation to block the battlefield and logistics. Did you hear that the reservoir there was completely drained?" Flint says to us.

The main technical assets of the Ukrainian army in this operation were HIMARS and mid-range strike drones, which in the Separate Assault Regiments are often called "front-strikes" (frontline strike drones).

Phalanx's third operation took place in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Part of that very operation – Darts hunting Russian vehicles – we saw on the screens at the command post.

Its main task was to knock out Russian logistics along three key roads in Zaporizhzhia Oblast: Tokmak – Melitopol, Tokmak – Berdiansk and Melitopol – Berdiansk.

It is precisely along these routes that the logistics for the units fighting against the 1st Separate Assault Regiment and its associates travel. And this is another answer to the question of whether mid-range strikes have an impact on the front.

Over 10 days of the operation, Phalanx destroyed 116 light vehicles and 103 heavy vehicles on the three roads. The highest-value targets, as expected, were on the road furthest from the line of contact, Melitopol – Berdiansk.

Mid-range strikes were launched literally in swarms. As far as UP is aware, roughly a third to a half of those launched reach their target. Many drones are shot down by the enemy, due to the density of mobile fire groups and interceptor crews.

Incidentally, an interesting detail is that some of the pilots serving in CODE 9.2 flew remotely – from Kharkiv Oblast – thanks to Starlink satellite links. This saves a significant amount of time and effort in redeploying the unit.

In parallel with the drones, infantry was moving through Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Over several months of gradual advance, the 1st Separate Assault Regiment liberated approximately 70 sq km of territory near the settlement of Solodke.

Overall, in terms of the number of e-points, as of the end of August 2026, Phalanx is in roughly 50th place out of more than 400 units.

***

As far as UP is aware, Perun and Flint are currently trying to persuade the new Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi to grant them more freedom than other regiments – and not to include them in the newly created Joint Rapid Response Forces.

There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, both commanders want to preserve their "assault trooper culture" – where, in their words, a commander's authority is earned in battle, shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers. Their soldiers, they say, will not respect a commander appointed from above purely on account of his rank.

Secondly, they are not keen on fighting under the command of a paratrooper.

Thirdly, like practically all strong commanders, they are convinced of their own uniqueness and effectiveness.

Whether Phalanx will continue to exist and in what format it will operate is, for now, an open question.

Olha Kyrylenko, UP

Translated by Tetiana Buchkovska, Anastasiia Lipara

Edited by Susan McDonald