“When we took the town there was almost no damage,” Andreyi said, something relatively easily verified by videos posted by advancing Ukrainian soldiers at the time. “And two weeks ago it was quiet. Now they’re hitting the town with artillery, drones and glide bombs.”

It is a familiar story. For the last two years, one of Russia’s main tactics for taking Ukrainian settlements has simply been to pound them into rubble with heavy artillery and air strikes, before moving in waves of disposable infantry to occupy the ruins.

Before we leave for Russia, a white triangle is applied to the vehicle we are travelling in and blue tape is wrapped around our arms: a simple but effective measures to identify that we are not Russian infiltrators to Ukrainian forces inside Kursk.

The situation inside the Ukrainian-controlled portion of Russia is tense. After initial successes, Russia is now counter-attacking in force.

Some of its FPV teams have been moved to the Kursk region in an attempt to push back the Ukrainian incursion, a member of the Ukrainian 80th Airborne reveals. It suggests the strategy of attempting to draw Russian forces away from Ukraine’s Donbas region has been at least partially successful.

As a result of the drone threat, the military vehicle in front of us – driven by Andreyi and our other Ukrainian escorts – bristles with antennas, making it a powerful electronic warfare jamming system designed to detect and defend against drones.

We’re all aware that an experienced FPV pilot is largely capable of negating such measures, so our best defence is to drive fast to not stay in any one location for too long, and look as inconspicuous as possible.

As we enter Russia, we pass the destroyed border crossing, smashed in the initial Ukrainian assault.

The road to Sudzha is lined with a number of destroyed armoured vehicles; we pass a Ukrainian M109 self-propelled gun sitting abandoned in a field and then the burnt out shells of two Russian tanks in quick succession.

On the outskirts of the town, we drive by numerous destroyed buildings; the charred skeletal remains of one civilian property is still smouldering. According to our escort, it was struck by a Russian artillery or drone strike a few hours ago.