crimea: the war before the war

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Monday, March 30, 2026
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Francis Farrell

Reporter

Francis Farrell is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is the co-author of War Notes, the Kyiv Independent's weekly newsletter about the war. For the second year in a row, the Kyiv Independent received a grant from the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust to support his front-line reporting for the year 2025-2026. Francis won the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandy for war correspondents in the young reporter category in 2023, and was nominated for the European Press Prize in 2024. Francis speaks Ukrainian and Hungarian and is an alumnus of Leiden University in The Hague and University College London. He has previously worked as a managing editor at the online media project Lossi 36, as a freelance journalist and documentary photographer, and at the OSCE and Council of Europe field missions in Albania and Ukraine.

f.farrell@kyivindependent.com
For media & speaking inquiries:
press@kyivindependent.com

Articles

Video

How Ukraine is pushing back Russia with bomber drones

by Francis Farrell, Nick Allard
As winter ends, fighting on Ukraine’s southern front is intensifying, and drones are leading the battle. The Ukraine’s 423rd Separate Drone Battalion, known as the “Scythian Griffins,” operates in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. With both sides preparing for a larger spring and summer campaign, the battle for Ukraine’s south is entering a new phase.
President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 13, 2025.
Politics

The trade-off Ukraine won't make

by Tim Zadorozhnyy, Chris York, Francis Farrell, Oleksiy Sorokin
U.S.-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have stalled as Kyiv refuses to cede territory in the country's east without a fight, a Kremlin demand that officials familiar with the matter say is not opposed by Washington. At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelensky faces scrutiny after offering differing assessments of U.S. readiness to provide security guarantees. Kyiv has insisted that credible security guarantees are necessary to prevent Russia from launching another invasion. Y
The 148th Artillery Brigade near Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on Jan. 11, 2026.
War

Battlefield analysis: What Ukraine’s recent front-line gains really mean

by Francis Farrell
Ukraine has survived its toughest winter yet during the full-scale war, but now it must face the spring. Across the front line, as the weather warms, the ground hardens, and spring foliage returns to the tree lines and forests of Ukraine's east, conditions for mounting assault operations improve in turn. In the spring campaign of 2026 — the fifth of the full-scale war — there are no more illusions, not in Ukraine nor in the international arena, that U.S.-mediated "peace negotiations" with Russ
Workers install anti-drone netting over a street in Kherson, Ukraine, on Nov. 21, 2025.
Photos

Inside Russia's everyday manhunt of Ukrainians in Kherson

by Francis Farrell
At the moment the grey mass of radio static gives way to a clear image on the drone detector screen, the hunter still seems deceptively far away. Looking down on the central neighbourhood of Kherson from a bird’s-eye view, it remains unclear where the Russian drone is coming from or who it is stalking. Catching the analog radio signal of the first-person-view (FPV) drone’s video transmitter, the detector shows exactly what the Russian pilot sees through his goggles as he flies from the occupi
Ukrainian mobile air defense during night patrol in Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine, on Dec. 2, 2024.
War

Ukraine's experience priceless as Iran war sees long-range strike drones go global

by Francis Farrell
The Trump administration's move to launch a large-scale strike operation in Iran has seen state-on-state war return to the Middle East with a vengeance. Hours after the first U.S. and Israeli strikes began hitting the country on Feb. 28, Tehran — despite its leadership being decapitated on the first day of the fighting — retaliated with large-scale missile and drone attacks across the region, with a focus on U.S. military bases and embassies. On top of its arsenal of ballistic missiles, Iran's
Russia lost more territory than it gained in February.
War

Chart of the week: Russia lost more territory than it gained for the first time since 2023

by Francis Farrell, Luca Léry Moffat
Russia lost more territory than it gained in February for the first time since Ukraine's failed counteroffensive in 2023, according to independent Finnish open-source intelligence collective Black Bird Group. Russia lost 37 km² on balance last month, causing the total area of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia to modestly drop to 118,917 km², according to the group’s analysis. The independent assessment comes after Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi also claimed on March 2 that

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