Ukrainian Soldiers Starving, Fainting from Hunger on Front Lines

Kyiv, Ukraine – Disturbing photographs of four emaciated, exhausted Ukrainian soldiers sparked a wave of outrage in late April. The group reportedly endured hunger on the front lines, going 17 days without food supplies and months without rotation.

“The fighters are fainting from hunger; they have to drink rainwater,” wrote Anastasia Silchuk, wife of a soldier from the 14th Mechanized Brigade, on social media on April 22. Her husband and his comrades are stranded on the eastern bank of the Oskil River in Donetsk province after bridges linking them to the brigade on the western bank were destroyed by Russian bombs.

“They are not being heard on the radio, or perhaps no one wants to listen to them. My husband has been shouting and begging that there is no food or water,” Silchuk said.

Oleksandr, a soldier just returned from combat, told Al Jazeera he experienced extreme hunger while fighting for his country. In a bunker shelter on a barren front line in southeastern Ukraine earlier this year, Oleksandr remembered his family, his homeland, and his life before the war, but what he missed most was a hot meal. “You dream of a hot meal, because for weeks what you eat is just chocolate bars, oatmeal, and a bottle of water a day,” he confided.

The dramatic development of military drones, operating 24/7 on a front line stretching up to 25 kilometers, has rendered trenches and supply vehicles nearly obsolete. Ukrainian positions have become isolated points, and supplying food, ammunition, and medicine has become a matter of survival.

“Gone are the days when you could step out of the bunker for a smoke,” said Ihor, commander of a drone unit in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian side faces similar dangers. Soldiers are ordered to move in groups of two or three to avoid Ukrainian drones, but they are often hunted. Small, cheap suicide drones packed with explosives have rendered tanks and armored vehicles obsolete. The only vehicle that can escape is a pickup truck racing at 120 km/h, but few dare to risk it on the rough terrain filled with bomb craters and mines.

Drone supply has become the primary solution for at least a year, according to Andriy Pronin, one of the pioneers of drone warfare in Ukraine. However, Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at the University of Bremen, questions the extent. He believes “no more than 10% of the entire Ukrainian army” receives food dropped by drones; a disrupted system could lead to deaths from starvation.

Days after the images of exhausted soldiers spread, brigade officers declared that “delivering everything, from a piece of bread to a disassembled generator… is done by air” and that Russian forces “intercept, shoot down as many drones as possible.” The brigade commander was subsequently dismissed. Ukraine's Defense Ministry ordered an investigation and stated on April 28 that the food shortage for this brigade and two neighboring military units “must not become systematic.”

Oleksandr recalled when drones were still a novelty to Russian soldiers. “When we flew our heavy Vampire drones, they looked up at us until we dropped ammunition. Some fell, some ran. Or crawled away.”

In March 2025, a small amount of drone-dropped food facilitated a surrender. The 3rd Assault Brigade spotted a hungry Russian soldier hiding in a snow-covered forest in Kharkiv province. He signaled to a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone that he wanted to surrender, and did so after receiving a chocolate bar with instructions to a Ukrainian position.

On the Russian side, many soldiers are sent into dangerous missions with almost no drone supply. Mohammad, a Tajik migrant worker tricked into “volunteering” to fight, told Al Jazeera in September 2025 that he received only “one small bottle of water, two or three very small chocolate bars” during nearly a month in an abandoned village in Luhansk province, foraging for raw pasta and leftover food. His weight dropped from 76 kg before the war to 60 kg, even though he got three meals a day at a Ukrainian POW detention center.

In October 2025, Ukrainian intelligence accused hundreds, possibly thousands, of Russian soldiers of being abandoned on islands in the Dnipro River in Kherson province, facing “serious problems” with food and ammunition supplies. There have been unverified reports of cannibalism among starving Russian soldiers. Late in April, Britain's The Times cited an intercepted conversation between two Russian officers about a soldier who killed a comrade, “cut off a leg,” and prepared to eat it, but was shot dead by other soldiers.