They escaped the frontlines of Ukraine. The sound of the drone follows them

Pavlo, in a narrow apartment in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, is a 30-year-old drone operator who recently returned from the front and unpacked a black box about the size of a pizza box. Inside, he intends to fly a four-wheeled drone around the room.

He presses the button on the control unit and pushes the antenna to a different position. Nothing happened. “I’m sorry, not today,” he said with a smile. The device looks good, but it’s a bit broken.

On the front, Pavlo only asked to be identified by his name, and he was the pilot of the First Person View (FPV) drone. These highly steerable drones have front-facing cameras that allow them to fly remotely. Over the past year or so, bomb-filled FPV has become ubiquitous on the front lines of Ukraine, replacing heavy weapons in the first phase of the war.

FPV chases armored vehicles, hunts infantry units through tree trunks, and stalks individual soldiers to death. “You can’t hide in FPV, running is useless,” Pavlo said. “You try to be as calm as possible and then pray.”

Even if the FPV is too high to be clearly seen or hidden behind the leaves, soldiers can hear its unique, treble complaints.

“The bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ”

After more than a year on the front line, Pavlo returns to the Keefe apartment he shared with his wife. But the sound of the drone followed him. Everyday mechanical tools like lawn mowers, motorcycles and air conditioners remind him of his and his unit partner’s FPV.

Nature is not an escape. Pavlo no longer heard bees and flies buzzing around him without panic. “I don’t like going into nature and hearing that sound because it makes me think of drones very hard,” he said.

The trauma associated with sound is nothing new – after returning to civilian life, generations of soldiers were affected by sudden noise. But as Ukraine’s war develops into a drone-driven conflict, trauma develops with it.

“In the past year, most patients (if not physically injured) have suffered mental health damage due to drone activity,” said Dr. Serhii Andriichenko, chief psychiatrist of Kiev Military Hospital. “We call this ignorant phobia.”

Dr Andriichenko said thousands of men are now returning from Pavlo and others with acute stress disorder associated with drone sounds. Ignorance phobia can be triggered by a series of ordinary urban sounds (scooters and scooters, lawn mowers, air conditioners – anything mechanically called).

“If it’s a mop or lawn mower, my first thought was that it could be a drone,” said Savur, another retreating frontline soldier who lost his arm in the FPV drone attack.

On the front line, drones are “permanent voices” and he is determined by his call signs as required by military regulations. “The sound of the shell can only last for a few seconds, but the sound of the drone is there most of the time,” he said.

“You could lie in your own position, in the fox’s hole, listen for hours. I remember it always sounded.”

Or sometimes the problem is the opposite – silence. “Silence is always the beginning,” said psychiatrist Dr. Andriichenko. “When soldiers spin to their position of fighting, they start listening carefully to make sure there are no drones. There is a constant tension, a constant fear. They are always looking up.”

In many cases, returning to civilian life does not eliminate this constant tension. Soldiers have been observed suddenly turning off the lights at home, moving them away from the window and hiding under the furniture.

Later, if a soldier was seen undergoing treatment, Dr. Andriichenko described that he often had no memory of any trigger sound, but his wife or family would reveal the abstract of the fan or air conditioner just turned on.

The soldiers of the earlier stages of the war (characterized by cruel direct combat) returned home and feared that they would happen in the forest, and most of the battles took place. But drone warfare has reversed the phenomenon. The psychiatrist said soldiers are now “safetest in the forest, under the dense canopy.” “In their free time, they try to avoid the forest area.”

The rise of drone use has another terror effect on combat forces – it has extended the dangerous area to the frontline. Action to 40 km (25 miles) soldiers, or pull back after a lot of spins, unable to drop the guards anymore.

Nazar Bokhii, the commander of the small drone unit, one day about 5 kilometers from the contact line, when his unit hit directly 22 kilometers from the Russian mortar. Bokhii was inspired by success and stood out from the canoe and forgot about usually stopping to listen to the Telltale Buzz for the first time.

Along with the hotel, Russian FPV is wandering in the air. As it drove him away, Boggy had only time to raise his arm. When it detonated, it held his hand and left eye, burning his face.

Bokhii’s own PTSD is limited and occasionally reacts to fearful motorcycles and lawn mowers, he said. But he knows the effect of the sound because his unit uses it to horrify others.

“We are the side that causes fear of voices, not the side that suffers fear,” Boggy said.

They realized at some point that sound could be used to force Russian soldiers into naked areas. “You buzz around them, and it becomes a test of the psychological resilience of the enemy,” Boggy said. “The sound of the drone itself is a serious psychological attack.”

According to Bokhii, the buzz above a soldier is long enough that he will leave a powerful shelter and simply enter the open terrain. “The way our psychology works makes it necessary for us to do something to calm ourselves down,” Bokhii said. “So you linger around, psychologically suppressing him…he starts running and becomes easier to hit.”

The psychological horror of FPV is no longer just a frontline problem. It even goes beyond the area behind the front line. Russia has begun to use FPV to abandon ammunition from civilians in nearby Ukrainian cities.

The worst hot character is Kherson, a southern city occupied by Russian troops for some time, still comfortably within the range of the drone. According to Human Rights Watch, Russian troops deliberately targeted civilians in the city with FPV drones and killed or maimed them – a war crime.

According to the regional military government, at least 84 civilians have been killed in the Hessen area so far this year due to Russian drone attacks.

Residents say small FPV is horrible every day.

“There is no longer a safe place,” said Dmytro Olifirenko, a 23-year-old border guard who lives in Colson. “You always have to be alert and focus, so your body is constantly under stress.”

Olifirenko was waiting at the bus stop in September when he heard the familiar sound of Russian drones. “We think this will follow the bus because they’ve been hunting civilian buses,” he said.

Instead, the drone simply puts its ammunition on the bus stop and sends shrapnel into Olifirenko’s head, face and legs. The video of the incident was shot by bystanders, capturing the buzzing of the drone, followed by Olifirenko’s screams.

He said Olifirenko is now “constantly” hearing drones “constantly”. “It will seriously hit your mental and mental health,” he said. “Even if you go to Mykolaiv or another city, you are constantly trying to listen.”

For civilians like Oliferenko, drones have changed the normal sound of densely populated areas – cars, motorcycles, generators, lawn mowers, air conditioners – to make civilians run every day, even if they are with the real danger of the drone itself.”

For soldiers like Pavlo, drones create a new specific type of fear that is not easy to shake.

“You see the world as a battlefield,” Pavlo said. “It can be a battlefield.”

Of all the triggers, hearing—the human drones are exploiting so effectively—is the most sinister.

“When you see something, your brain can check it in a second, and you can realize it is very fast.

“But the unknown sound is different. Your brain has changed. You can’t ignore it, you have to respond. Because on the front line, it can save your life.”

Svitlana Libet contributed to this report. Photos of Joel Gunter.