They escaped Ukraine's front lines. The sound of drones followed them

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In a cramped apartment in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Pavlo, a 30-year-old drone operator who had recently returned from the front, unzipped a black case about the size of a pizza box. Inside, there was a four-rotor drone he intended to fly around the room. He pressed buttons on the control unit and pushed the antenna to different positions. Nothing happened. "Sorry, not today," he said, with a smile. The unit looked fine, but something was broken. At the front, Pavlo, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was a pilot of first-person view (FPV) drones. 

These small, highly manoeuvrable drones have front-facing cameras that allow them to be flown remotely. Over the past year or so, bomb-laden FPVs have become ubiquitous on the front lines in Ukraine, replacing the heavy weapons that characterised the war's first phase. The FPVs chase armoured vehicles, hunt infantry units through treelines and stalk individual soldiers to their deaths. "You cannot hide from the FPV, and to run is useless," Pavlo said. "You try to be as calm as possible, and you pray."

Even when an FPV is too high to see clearly, or hidden behind foliage, soldiers can hear its distinctive, high-pitched whine. After more than a year at the front, Pavlo has returned home to the Kyiv apartment he shares with his wife. But the sound of the drones has followed him. Everyday mechanical tools like lawnmowers, motorcycles and air conditioners remind him of the FPVs that hunted him and his unit mates. And nature is not an escape. Pavlo can no longer hear the sound of bees and flies buzzing near him without a creeping panic. "I don't like to go into nature anymore and hear this sound, because it reminds me so hard of the drones," he said.

Trauma associated with sound is not new – generations of soldiers have been affected by sudden noises after returning to civilian life. But as the war in Ukraine has evolved into a conflict driven by drone technology, the trauma has evolved with it. Over the past year, the majority of patients – if they are not physically wounded – have mental health injuries as a result of being under drone activity," said Dr Serhii Andriichenko, chief psychiatrist at Kyiv's military hospital. "We call this droneophobia."The first trial of its kind: A Russian solder takes