For Americans in Ukraine, Opportunity and the Lure of Combat

In the open bed of a pickup truck, half a dozen soldiers were bouncing along a country road in eastern Ukraine when one of them yelled, “Drone!” They all opened fire with their rifles, yet hitting the tiny, swerving speck carrying death was all but impossible.

Buzzing in fast, within seconds it was only about a yard away. In that moment, captured on a helmet camera on a crystalline spring day, the soldiers seemed doomed. In a desperate act of self-defense, one of them, an American, Pvt. Zachary Miller, hurled his empty rifle at the drone — and missed, he said in an interview.