He fled to the Frontline of Ukraine. Followed the sounds of drones

Kyiv, in an apartment in the capital of Pavlo Ukraine, returned from a 30-year drone operator from the front front, decompressed a black case about the size of a pizza box. Inside, the four rotor drone was intended to fly through the room.

He pressed the control unit buttons and pushed the antenna to different positions. Nothing happened. “Sorry, today don’t,” he said with a smile. The unit was fine, but something was broken.

On the front, Pavlo, who had to be identified only with his name, was the first person’s vision (FPV) drone pilot. The drones have a very small men to face the front cameras, which allow them to fly remotely. Last year, Bomb-Laden fpvak has become ubiquitous in the first lines of Ukraine, replacing heavy weapons that characterize the first phase of war.

FPVS detected armored vehicles, hunts infantry units to tretins and stems individual soldiers to the dead. “You can’t hide from FPV, and running is useless,” Pavlo said. “You try to be as quiet as possible, and you pray.”

While a fpv is very high, when the leaves are behind or hidden, the soldiers can hear its distinctive sloped rumor.

“Bzzzzzzzzzzz,” Pavlo said. “You’re hunting.”

After more than a year in the front, Pavlo shares with his wife to Kyiv apartment. The sound of drones followed. The daily mechanical tools are reminiscent of grassy, motorcycles and air conditioners, fpvak and friends of his unit.

And nature is not running away. Pavlo can’t hear the sound of bees and flies next to him without a trace of panic. “I don’t like to get into nature and listen to this sound, because it reminds you of hard drones,” he said.

The trauma associated with the sound is not new – generations of soldiers had sudden noises after returning to civilian life. But as Ukrainian war drone technology has become a guided conflict, it has evolved with this trauma.

“In the last year, if they are physically injured – mental health activity injuries due to drone activity,” Serii Andriichenko Dr. Seziichenkok, Kyiv Military Psychiatrist Psychiatrist. “We call this droneophobia.”

Many thousand men are returning from the front like Pavlo, related to sounds related to acute stress disorders, Dr. Andriichenko said. Droneophobia can cause a range of common sounds in the city – small motorcycles and small scooters, grassy, air conditioning – whirrs that mechanical.

“If it’s a moped or grass, my first thought can be a drone,” said another soldier returned to another soldier, Savur, lost his arm in a fpv drone attack.

The front line was “Sustainable Sound”, Savur, according to the military protocol, asked that he identified his calls. “The sound of the shell lasts a few seconds, but the sound of the drone is mostly there,” he said.

“In your position, you can be in your fox and listen to hours. I remember the sound all the time.”

Or sometimes the problem was the opposite – silence. “Silence is always home,” said Andriichenkok, psychiatrists. “When soldiers go against rotation positions, they start listening carefully to ensure that there is no drone. There is constant tension, constantly fear. They are always looking.”

In many cases, this constant strain is not thrown into the return of civilian life. Soldiers have suddenly seen the lights off home, away from the windows and hiding under the furniture.

Later, if a soldier sees treatment, Dr. Andriichenko did not have any kind of sound.

Soldiers from the previous phases of the war were latal and direct fighting. He came home with fear of being in the woods, where many fights happened. Drone Warfare has reversed phenomenon. Now soldiers “feel the safest in the woods, in dense tree cannons,” the psychiatrist said. “And in their free time, they try to avoid forest areas.”

The increase in the use of drones has been a terrorization of other effects for fighting troops – extended the risk of remote line. The soldiers work up to 40 km (25 km), or after the heavy rotation back, they cannot let their guard.

Nazar Bokhii, the commander of a small drone unit, was about 5 km from the contact line, his unit had a direct success in the position of the Russian mortar. He was successful, Bokhii was out of the hole, forgetting to stop the usual protocol first.

Metro far, Russian FPV Loitering in the air. As he knocked on him, Bokhii had only time to lift your arms. When he detonated, he took his hands and his left eyes and smoked his face wrong.

Bokhii’s own PTSD was limited, occasionally the fear of responding to motorcycles and grasses. But he knew the sound effect, he said, because he used his unit to panic in others.

“We were side affected by the sound of fear, he didn’t the side of the side,” Bokhii said.

At the point of some moments, the sound were realized to force Russian soldiers in the sites seen. “You bura around and becomes a test of psychological resilience of the enemy,” Bokhii said. “The sound of the drone is a serious psychological attack.”

According to Bokhii, it is long enough above a soldier’s roar and will leave strong protection and simply enters the open land. “Our psychology works in a way that we need to calm ourselves to calm down,” Bokhii said. “So you get rid of near and psychologically … and it starts running and makes it easier.”

And the psychological panic of FPV is no longer a problem in the first line. It has come beyond the sites behind the previous lines. Russia has begun using FPV to fall around civilians around the surrounding cities.

Among the bad hit Kherson is, the southern city, at the same time occupied Russian forces and still comfortable in the drone district. According to human rights clock, Russian forces have intentionally directed civilians in the city with FPV drones and died – the crime of war.

According to the military regions of the regions, at least 84 civilians died in the Kherson region, as a result of Russian drone attacks this year.

Residents say that small FPVs are a daily panic.

“There is no safe place.” He said Dmytro Olifiriko, 23-year-old border guard living in Kherson. “You should always be attentive, focused, and that’s why the body is constantly under stress,” he said.

He was waiting at an Olifi bus station in September when he heard the known sound of a Russian drone. “We thought he would continue the bus because they were hunting civil buses,” he said.

Instead, the drone left his ammunition at the bus station, sending the sheet of the olifi’s head, face and leg. The videos of the events shot by an aganda, followed by the whirlwind of the drone followed by Olifi.

Olifiriko now heard the drones “constantly”, he said, whether they were there. “It’s hard for mental and psychological health,” he said. “When you leave mykolaiv or other city, you are constantly trying to listen.”

For civilians like Oliferko, fans have transformed common sounds of populated sites – cars, motorbikes, generators, grasses, air conditioners – while civilians running daily, as well as discussing the risk of drones.

Soldiers returned before, like Pavlo, drone created a new and precise kind of fear, which is not easy to shake.

“You see the world as a battlefield,” Pavlo said. “It can become battlefield in a second.”

And among all the launchers, listening – human sensible drones are exploiting so effectively – it was the most cunning, he said.

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

“But the unknown sound is different. Your brain has changed. You cannot ignore it, you need to answer your life.”

Svitlana Libet helped in this report. Photos from Joel Gunter.