They escaped the advanced lines of Ukraine. The sound of drones followed by them

In a close apartment in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, a 30-year-old drone operator who recently returned from the front, unbuttoned the black body size from the pizza box. Inside was a four -lane drone, which he intended to fly around the room.

He pressed the buttons on the control unit and pushed the antenna into different positions. Nothing happened. “Excuse me today,” he said with a smile. The unit looked normal, but something was broken.

In the front of Paul, who asked to identify only his name, he was a first -person pilot (FPV). These small, very maneuverable drones have front cameras that allow them to fly remotely. Over the past year and so, the FPV, loaded with bombs, became ubiquitous on the front in Ukraine, replacing heavy weapons that characterized the first phase of the war.

FPVs pursue armored vehicles, hunting for infantry units through trelin and roads that stand on the way to death. “You can’t hide from FPV, and it is useless to launch,” Paul said. “You try to be as calm as possible and pray.”

Even if FPV is too high to see clearly or hidden behind the foliage, soldiers can hear its characteristic, high nagging.

“BZZZZZZZZZZZ,” Paul said. “You are hunted.”

After more than a year at the front, Paul returned home to Kiev’s apartment, which he shared with his wife. But the sound of drones followed him. Daily mechanical instruments such as lawn mowers, motorcycles and air conditioners remind him of the FPV who hunted him and his units.

And nature is not escape. Paul no longer hears the sound of bees and flies that are buzzing next to it, I do not creeic panic. “I no longer like to go into nature and hear this sound because it is so much reminiscent of the drones,” he said.

Sound -related trauma is not new – sudden noises have influenced the soldiers after returning to civilian life. But since the war in Ukraine has turned into a conflict due to unmanned technology, the trauma developed with it.

“Over the past year, most patients – if they do not have physically wounded – have mental health injuries as a result of unmanned activity,” said D -s Serhia Andrichenko, the chief psychiatrist at the Kiev military hospital. “We call it a drone.”

Many thousands of men return from the front, like Paul, with acute stress -related stress, said D -Andrichenko. The silent can be caused by the array of ordinary urban sounds – small motorcycles and scooters, lawn mowers, air conditioners – which is a mechanical that rotates.

“If it is a moped or lawn mower, my first thought: it can be a drone,” said another soldier of the front line Savur, who lost his hand as a result of the attack of the FPV drone.

On the front line, the drones were a “constant sound”, – said Savur, who, according to the military protocol, asked to identify his qualification. “The sound of the shell lasts only a few seconds, but the sound of the drone exists most of the time,” he said.

“You can lie in your position, in your fox, and listen to it for hours. I remember it sounds all the time.”

Or sometimes the problem was the opposite – silence. “Silence is always the beginning,” said the psychiatrist D -R Andrichenko. “When the soldiers go to rotation for combat positions, they start listening carefully to make sure there is no drone. There is a constant tension, constant fear. They always look up.”

In many cases, this constant sense of tension was not dispelled by a return to civilian life. Soldiers are suddenly observed at home, leaving the windows and hiding under the furniture.

Later, when the soldier sees on the treatment, Dr. Andrichenko tells how he often does not have a memory of some trigger, but his wife or family member will find that a fan of the hood or air conditioning has just been included.

Soldiers from the previous stages of the war – which were more characteristic, fights – came home, fearing to be in the forests where most of the fighting took place. But the drone war changed the phenomenon. Now the soldiers “feel the safest in the forests, under the thick, bad sheds,” the psychiatrist said. “And in their spare time they try to avoid woody areas.”

The growth of the use of drones had another terrorization effect for combat troops – it expanded the dangerous zone far from the front line. Soldiers running up to 40 km (25 miles) or distracted after heavy rotation can no longer lower their guard.

Nazar Bojia, commander of a small unmanned bloc, was approximately 5 km from the contact line to the dugout once when his unit gained a direct blow to the Russian mortar at 22 km. Bahia, who struck success, borders on the dugout, forgetting about the usual stop protocol first to listen to the cal.

Swords, Russian FPV made it up in the air. When he was rolling toward him, Bohay only had time to raise his hands. When he exploded, he took both hands and the left eye and badly burned his face.

According to him, his own Bokhii PTSD was limited, to a random reaction of fear to motorcycles and lawn mowers. But he knew about the sound effect, he said because his unit used it to tear others.

“We were a side that caused fear with sound, not from the side that suffered from it,” Bohi said.

At some point, they realized that the sound could be used to coerce Russian soldiers in open areas. “You buzz around them, and it becomes a test of the enemy’s psychological stability,” Bojia said. “The drone sound itself is a serious psychological attack.”

According to Bojia, the basin over the soldier is long enough, and he will leave a strong shelter and just hit the open area. “Our psychology works in such a way that we need to do something to calm ourselves,” Bojia said. “So you hover near and psychologically suppress him … And it starts working and it becomes easier to hit.”

And the Psychological Terror FPV is no longer just a problem on the front line. He even reached even the sections behind the front lines. Russia has started using FPV to abandon the ammunition for civilians in Ukrainian cities nearby.

Among the worst hit is Herson, the southern city occupied by Russian troops and still comfortable within the drones. According to Human Rights Watch, Russian forces intentionally aimed at civilians in the city with FPV drones and killed or crippled them – a war crime.

According to the regional military administration, at least 84 civilians have been killed in the Hersan region as a result of Russian drones.

Residents say tiny FPV is a daily terror.

“There’s no longer such a safe place,” said Dmitry Olifirenko, a 23-year-old border guard who lives in Kherson. “You should always be vigilant, concentrated, and from this body constantly undergoing stress,” he said.

Alifirenko waited at a stop in September when he heard a familiar sound of a Russian drone. “We thought it would be on the bus because they hunted civilian buses,” he said.

Instead, the drone simply threw the ammunition at the stop, sending Shrapnel to the head, face and leg Alifirenko. A video about the incident, shot by a random witness, captured the noise of the drone, and behind it the screams of Olifirenko when he went to the sidewalk.

Alifirenko has now heard the drones “constantly,” he said whether they were there or not. “It gets into your mental and psychological health,” he said. “Even if you go to Mykolaiv or other city, you are constantly trying to listen.”

For civilian residents such as Aliferenko, drones have turned the usual sounds of the inhabited area – machines, motorcycles, generators, lawn mowers, conditioners – into a psychological mittened, so that civilians run every day, even when they fight the real danger of the drone themselves.

For soldiers returning from the front, like Paul, drones have created a new and specific type of fear that not just shake.

“You see the world as a battlefield,” Paul said. “It can become a battlefield at any second.”

And of all triggers, listening – human meaning of drones exploits so effectively – he was the most insidious, he said.

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

“But the unknown sound is different. Your brain has been changed. You can’t ignore it, you must answer. Because on the frontline it can save your life.”

Liberate’s light contributed to this report. Photos by Joel Hannerator.