Olifirenko was waiting at a bus stop in September when he heard the familiar sound of a Russian drone overhead. “We thought it would follow the bus, because they had been hunting civilian buses,” he said.<\/p>\n
Instead, the drone simply dropped its munition on the bus stop, sending shrapnel into Olifirenko’s head, face and leg. Video of the incident, filmed by a bystander, captured the buzz of the drone followed by Olifirenko’s screams as he bled onto the pavement.<\/p>\n
Olifirenko now heard the drones “constantly”, he said, whether they were there or not. “It hits your mental and psychological health hard,” he said. “Even when you leave for Mykolaiv or another city, you are constantly trying to listen.”<\/p>\n
For civilians like Oliferenko, the drones have transformed the ordinary sounds of a populated area \u2013 cars, motorcycles, generators, lawnmowers, air conditioners \u2013 into a psychological gauntlet for civilians to run every day, even as they contend with the real danger of the drones themselves.<\/p>\n
For the soldiers coming back from the front, like Pavlo, the drones have created a new and specific type of fear, one that is not easy to shake.<\/p>\n
“You see the world as a battlefield,” Pavlo said. “It can become a battlefield any second.”<\/p>\n
And of all the triggers, hearing – the human sense drones are exploiting so effectively – was the most insidious, he said.<\/p>\n
“When you see something, your brain can check it in a second, you can realise what it is very fast.<\/p>\n
“But an unknown sound is different. Your brain has been changed. You cannot ignore it, you must respond. Because at the frontline, it could save your life.”<\/p>\n
Svitlana Libet contributed to this report. Photographs by Joel Gunter.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olifirenko was waiting at a bus stop in September when he heard the familiar sound of a Russian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-310826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114956855076402003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}