‘If you Hear That Sound, You’re Probably Dead’: How Drone Attacks are Making Evacuations in Ukraine Increasingly Unsafe

Everything seemed to be on fire the last time Nicholas Samuels visited Toretsk. A renewed Russian offensive, launched at the end of June, was transforming this once relatively quiet section of the front into an inferno, leaving the remaining residents scrambling to escape.

Russian shelling, which was gradually levelling the small town, had ignited nearby fields, sending up billowing smoke that mixed with smoke from the nearby village of New York, which was also burning. The increased threat of drone attacks only intensified the tension.

“The drone unit that the Russians have near Toretsk seems to delight in hitting non-military targets, but worse, it seems that they were using civilians as bait,” explained Samuels, a 35-year-old humanitarian volunteer originally from the UK.

“There was a police car along the same road as us that got hit; amazingly, no one died, but four individuals who were there to evacuate some elderly people were heavily injured, and then they began to shell the area.”

After nearly three years of continuous combat, Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine has ushered in an unprecedented era of drone warfare, with both sides using a multitude of models for surveillance and lethal attacks to devastating effect.

As Russian forces continue to push their advances along sections of the Donbas front, the growing prevalence of drones has become a primary threat to soldiers and civilians alike. 

For volunteer groups organising evacuations of civilians from frontline areas like Toretsk, these drones have not only multiplied the threats they face but also significantly complicated their efforts to get residents out of harm’s way, as pressure continues to mount on Ukrainian defenders. 

“Things have changed,” explained Samuels. “Once upon a time, you could at least access a lot of these places, and it was a reasonable thing to do without massive, massive risk. Obviously, there’s always risk, but now if you don’t have a drone jammer on your vehicle, you could be pretty damn fudged.”

The evacuations that day were coordinated with the Ukrainian military, and despite warnings from soldiers at a checkpoint outside of town about proceeding without a drone-jamming system, Samuels and a small team successfully evacuated six people, including four elderly residents, without incident.

The speed with which the Russians had advanced on Toretsk had caught the remaining residents by surprise. A static front for nearly ten years, it only took two weeks for food and clean water to become scarce, as intense shelling kept people sheltered indoors or in basements. 

“They had no water, no food, nothing,” Samuels told Byline Times. “It was rough. We didn’t really know exactly what the status of the city was at that particular point, apart from knowing that New York was in trouble.”

New York is a village to the south of Toretsk that has also been the focus of a Russian summer offensive. All along these frontlines, the presence of first-person-view (FPV) drones has become ubiquitous over the last year.

Relatively inexpensive and highly accurate, FPV drones give pilots a first-person view as they fly into targets and detonate. Without an effective drone-jamming system, they are almost impossible to escape. 

Initially deployed in large numbers by Ukrainian forces to counter Russia’s numerical advantage in soldiers and equipment, FPV drones were quickly adopted and turned against Ukrainian defenders.

In September 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian army had received 140,000 drones that year and planned to expand production, aiming to produce 1.4 million in 2024.

Conversely, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on 1 October that Ukraine can now produce four million drones annually, and has already produced 1.5 million in 2024 so far.

Investments in drone production and technology have exponentially increased since 2022, with investments rising tenfold in 2023 compared to the previous year. More than $2 billion has reportedly been allocated to Ukrainian drone production in 2024.

These massive increases in the use of drones has consequently led to an increase in casualties among Ukrainian soldiers and civilians up and down the frontline, according to one medic who frequently treats injuries from drones. 

“Gunshot wounds have been the least of our problems; most casualties are from drones, artillery, and mines,” explained Jackson, a 40-year-old combat medic originally from Belarus, who currently serves in Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade. Jackson is his callsign.

Russian artillery works well on trenches and positions that are not moving, but the drones are horrible. They’re more discreet and cause more of our casualties these days. There’s an obvious need for more drone jammers

Jackson, combat medic

Countermeasures against Russian drones typically rely on devices that jam the radio frequencies and GPS signals drones use to communicate with their pilots. However, these devices can greatly range in price and effectiveness.

While they can be shot down, their speeds, of up to 100 km/hour, make them difficult targets. The high cost of most drone jamming systems means many volunteers often work without them if necessary.     

A main site of evacuations as of late has been the strategic town Pokrovsk, which sits roughly 50km to the southwest of Toretsk and is the current focus of Russian efforts.

A logistical hub for Ukrainian forces defending Donetsk Oblast, the town of formerly 60,000 has come under severe threat after the fall of Avdiivka in February. Russian forces have advanced roughly 40kms to the outskirts of the city, where fighting now rages six kilometers from the centre.

Helping evacuate the town’s residents is Jonathan, a 27-year-old American volunteer who asked to be identified by his first name only. A colleague of Samuels, he coordinates with a local refugee shelter and has individually evacuated roughly 25 people, along with dozens of their cats and dogs.           

“I don’t have a drone jammer, and so one of my own principles is that I’m not going to go in an area where there’s active FPVs, that’s just outside of my risk tolerance,” he explained. 

With shelling, it’s a roll of the dice, but Russian artillery is inaccurate so often it’s like ‘f**** it, let’s go,’ but FPVs are especially terrifying, because you know they’re so accurate and so efficient, and if you hear that sound, you know that you’re probably f****** dead

Jonathan, volunteer

Before agreeing to an evacuation, Jonathan always calls local contacts for the latest security assessment, which on at least one occasion spared him from driving down a road where a civilian car had just been struck by an FPV. Though even with up-to-date information, limiting exposure remains the best tactic.  

“I had one request for an evacuation for this lady and her dog, but the dog was loose and she wasn’t able to control it,” he explained. “Before the prevalence of FPVs, I would have probably just gone over to figure out a solution, but we had to basically turn down the evacuation, because she wouldn’t leave the dog, and we can’t put ourselves at risk to play dogcatcher.”

While Jonathan has been fortunate to avoid direct contact with Russian FPVs, and is currently fundraising for a drone jammer, others have been less fortunate.

On 6 October, Tyhran Halustian, a Ukrainian volunteer with the organisation Rose on the Hand, was killed when a FPV struck their vehicle during an evacuation south of Pokrovsk. In August, another volunteer organisation, Universal Aid for Ukraine, also came under attack from an FPV. 

The growing presence of FPVs has in some cases encouraged the military to limit access without prior coordination in areas where evacuations are needed. 

“The number of drones is increasing, and the trend is that they have started targeting not only the military, but also civilians and volunteers,” explained 40-year-old Ruslan, a volunteer with the organisation Save Ukraine who is responsible for coordinating evacuations in nearby Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

“Now there is an order from the Zaporizhzhia military-civilian administration that we cannot carry out evacuations without coordination with the police and the State Emergency Service, and sometimes this hinders us, because it takes time, but we are also concerned about safety, as something could strike at any second.”

The attacks on evacuation teams along the Donbas front are not isolated incidents. To the southeast, in the city of Kherson, Russian drones have also begun targeting civilians on a daily basis, an apparent effort to solely terrorise the residents of the once occupied city. 

With shortages in equipment and soldiers continuing to undermine Ukraine’s defence, the need to evacuate residents from the path of Russian advances will likely persist, though the growing presence of drones will continue to shape how this is conducted.    

“Honestly, now I’m of the point of view that if you are someone who’s a volunteer, and you’re not coordinating with the military directly, you should not be anywhere near the front,” explained Samuels. 

“Drones are everywhere, and it just comes down to whether they decide if they’re going for you or not. The only thing that maybe makes a difference is, not how your vehicle is painted, but how obvious a war crime is on footage? And even then, who’s going to hold them accountable?”