Ukraine’s latest weapons in its war with Russia: 3D-printed bombs

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drones, this can be a drawback. With a typical weight of just 300 grams, grenades are short on “killing power", says a man nicknamed “Lyosha", who is an amateur weapons-maker based in Kyiv. After one goes off, he says, targeted Russian soldiers “often just keep running".

Three months ago Lyosha and a group of friends, working in their homes, designed an alternative: an 800-gram anti-personnel bomb called the “Zaychyk", or “Rabbit". The group uses 3D printing to produce the bomb’s casing, before sending it to be filled with C4, an explosive, and pieces of steel shrapnel. In tests, Lyosha says, this shrapnel cuts into wooden planks “like butter".

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the Zaychyk is but one example of the sorts of lethal innovation that have sprung up in Ukraine in the 17 months since Russia’s invasion. Stocks of many factory-built munitions have shrunk as the fighting has worn on. But raw explosives remain plentiful.

That has helped create an amateur arms industry devoted to supplying soldiers at the front with improvised weapons to use against Russian troops. Lyosha’s team prints the plastic shells of around 1,000 “candy bombs," as these improvised explosive devices have come to be known, every week. But the Ukrainian officer who acts as the team’s military contact wants 1,500 a day, says “ADV", the nom de guerre of a second member of the group.

Another set of amateurs, the Druk (“Print") Army, has churned out more than 30,000 candy bombs in the past four months. “Swat", their leader, says that the production rate is growing. And still more come from beyond Ukraine’s borders.