Operation 'Snow for Akhmat': Ukraine Strikes Chechen Drone Pilot Academy in Snizhne — 65+ Cadets Killed

On the night of May 20–21, 2026 — with results confirmed and widely reported by May 22 — Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, in coordination with the SBU, executed Operation 'Snow for Akhmat,' striking a Russian drone pilot training complex in Snizhne, Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast. Eleven attack drones armed with 100 kg warheads struck a 2,484 sq-meter facility housing Sever-Akhmat Chechen military cadets, drone assembly areas, explosives storage, and a command post. Ukraine reported 65 Akhmat cadets killed along with their training commander — Lieutenant Colonel 'Buryi,' a Ph.D. at Russia's Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences — and approximately 1 instructor. President Zelensky confirmed the combined strikes (including a simultaneous FSB headquarters and air defense system strike) killed and wounded nearly 100 Russian personnel in total. The Sever-Akhmat battalion is a Chechen unit affiliated with Ramzan Kadyrov that had been training drone operators for deployment to Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. The operation name references the Akhmat unit, satirically matching snow-covered ruins with the unit's branding. The strike underscores Ukraine's expanding precision drone capability targeting Russian military training infrastructure within occupied territory. Day 1,548 of Russia's full-scale invasion.