Hostile skies: the Russian army deliberately targets civilian targets with FPV drones

Vasyl Pipa from Kurakhove police is holding a Russian FPV drone that fell in the town in October 2024. Photo: Kateryna Pryshchepa

Artem, the driver of an intercity bus, is rushing to pick up passengers on the streets of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast. At a spot where one of the passengers, a woman in her 60s, is waiting for him, Artem urges her to get on the bus as quickly as possible and takes off sharply. The street along which the bus is travelling has already been targeted by Russian FPV drones, so the man does not want to stay there for long. Nominally, Artem drives the bus on the Dnipro-Kurakhove and Kurakhove-Dnipro route, but it has been several weeks since he last entered Kurakhove. Civilian vehicles are now stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Kurakhove municipality, ten kilometres away from the town itself. Only military or police vehicles, or those with a special permit, can go further. This is because of the threat from FPV drones. Cases of Russian drone attacks on civilians in front line communities in Donetsk Oblast are recorded daily, and for civilians there are currently very few reliable means to protect themselves against them.

The name FPV is an abbreviation for “first person view”. It refers to a drone with an attached camera which transmits the image to the pilot’s special goggles in such a way that the drone’s camera becomes the pilot’s “eyes”. The first use of small FPV drones as an attack weapon was by the Ukrainian military in the spring of 2022, and since then the practice has spread rapidly in the Ukrainian army and has even been copied by the Russians.

The massive use of this type of weapon is caused by the FPVs’ relative cheapness, speed and accuracy. An FPV drone costs several hundred dollars or euros, while the price of an artillery shell can reach several thousand euros. Although the shell can cause more damage it is less precise and much more costly. So the FPV drones with attached explosives are widely used to target individual vehicles or small groups of people. They can also be used to destroy individual dugouts or small fortifications. The Russians, who have copied the Ukrainian army’s techniques of using FPV drones, deliberately use them on a large scale not only against the military on the front line but against civilians in communities close to it.

The Ukrainian military uses FPV drones in combination with reconnaissance drones. “When I see a target from Mavic, I pass the information to the officer on duty, and he gives the command to other pilots to use the FPV drone,” says P., a Ukrainian military pilot of reconnaissance drones.

Artem Shchus, head of the police department in Kurakhove, explains how the Russian use of FPV drones differs from that of Ukraine. “The Russians have much more money to spend on the war, and they have more FPV drones then we do. They often launch them when they don’t have a specific target, and when they see that the drone’s battery will run out in a minute or two and the drone will fall, they often decide to hit any target, including civilians. A few days ago, in Kurakhove, an FPV drone hit an electricity transformer, destroying the power supply in one of the residential areas. Another one landed on the roof of our police station, and attacks on individual civilians are also frequent,” says Shchus.

It is also much easier for the Russian army to get the FPV components mass produced in China.

Civilians do not have to be directly on the front line to become victims of a Russian FPV drone. Currently, the most common “working” distance for FPVs is about ten kilometres from the pilot’s location, but it can also reach 20 kilometres or more. The drones can reach a speed of several hundred kilometres per hour, which is why places like Pokrovsk or Kurakhove have become targets of constant Russian FPV attacks.

The murder of a volunteer

One of the Russian attacks on civilians took place on October 6th, when a Russian FPV drone hit a van near Kurakhove, killing Tigran Galustyan, a volunteer with the Kharkiv-based search and rescue group “Troianda na Rutsi” (A Rose on the Forearm). The group had long been engaged in evacuating civilians from the front line areas in Kharkiv Oblast, and with the intensification of the Russian offensive in Donetsk Oblast, it expanded its area of operation. On October 6th a drone carrying a HEAT type munition (designed to hit a single point in a concentrated manner rather than scattering into hundreds of fragments with a wider range of impact) pierced the roof of a car driven by Galustyan and caused a fatal injury. Galustyan and his colleague were on their way to the town of Hirnyk in Kurakhove municipality to pick up civilians who had requested evacuation. Police officers from Kurakhove, who were accompanying the civilian volunteers that day, provided first aid to the wounded man and managed to take him to a military stabilization point. Despite this, his injuries were too severe and he passed away a few hours later.

The attack on the vehicle driven by Tigran Galustyan was not the only one in Kurakhove municipality in recent days. On October 7th, an FPV drone attacked a civilian delivery van carrying food supplies for one of the very few grocery stores still operating in Kurakhove. On the same day, a civilian passenger car was attacked as local residents were trying to leave one of the villages in the municipality for safer areas. In both cases, the drivers and passengers survived, although the cars were damaged. On Saturday October 12th, a local resident was killed by an FPV drone attack on the outskirts of Kurakhove. The man was driving a civilian car and had no chance against the FPV drone.

A car destroyed by a drone. Photo courtesy of the Kurakhove Police

The means of protection

The death of the Kharkiv volunteer came as a big shock to his friends and the police because the crew had relied on the protection their vehicle was equipped with. The volunteers were travelling in a lightly armoured van, and also had an electronic warfare (EW) device installed in it. But unfortunately, these did not help. The vehicle’s light armour was not strong enough to protect it from a powerful, high explosive projectile designed to hit heavy armoured vehicles like tanks.

Recalling the day the volunteer was killed, one of the police officers wonders whether installing plates of so-called dynamic armour on the roof of the car could have helped to protect the driver against an attack. But his reasoning is more of a gesture of desperation. Dynamic armour consists of metal plates with explosives embedded between them. They are supposed to disperse the force of a cumulative munition (i.e. concentrated on single point) explosion, or destroy any such munition before it hits the vehicle, and protect the crew from explosives affecting the inside of the vehicle. But such plates can only be placed on heavy armoured military vehicles. Civilian ones simply cannot withstand the auxiliary explosions.

Military and civilian personnel who have to work with FPV drones say that the most reliable protection against them today is electronic warfare or radio jamming devices (EW). They interrupt a radio signal transmission from the FPV pilot to the drone, as a result of which the pilot loses control over the drone and is unable to hit the target accurately. These devices can also interfere with the video signal from the drone camera to the operator’s goggles, simply “rendering the pilot blind”.

EW capabilities and limitations

The electronic warfare has its limitations, as Ukrainian military drone pilot P. learned the hard way. A few weeks ago, an enemy FPV hit an infantry fighting vehicle. P. and his comrades were using it to get to a mission point in the Kurakhove sector of the front line. “We had the electronic warfare system activated, but it didn’t work as it should have,” says P. Fortunately, the FPV hit did not kill anyone in the crew. After the FPV drone hit, the driver was able to drive to safety and the crew was evacuated. “All of us were injured or have post-concussion syndrome, and the vehicle caught fire after the hit, so we also got carbon monoxide poisoning, but we are all alive and some of my colleagues have already returned to duty,” says P.

The reason the pilot and the Kharkiv volunteers’ electronic warfare device did not work could be that the devices’ batteries or power supply was weak or that they were jamming the radio signal on a different frequency than the enemy drones were using. “The Russians are constantly trying to “bypass” our electronic warfare and change the frequencies on which their drones fly (the signal between the drone and the pilot is transmitted – editor’s note). Therefore, at each section of the front line, it is necessary to know what frequency the enemy drones operate at and to have an electronic warfare device with the necessary characteristics,” explains Joe, a Ukrainian military FPV drone pilot.

The war in Ukraine prompted the mass private production of EW devices aimed at protecting vehicles, small fortifications and even individuals in situations such as the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the trenches. They all jam certain radio frequencies around the devices when they are on. It is not possible to completely jam the entire radio spectrum around every military or civilian vehicle. For one thing the crews need to use radio for communications. In addition, devices that jam a wide range of radio frequencies can have a severe negative impact on the vehicle’s driver and passengers, causing dizziness, headaches and disorientation. And the long-term health effects of EW exposure are yet to be investigated.

Despite all the limitations of electronic warfare devices, the military and police emphasize that they are now the main means of defence against FPV drones. For their successful use, however, it is necessary to correctly calculate the time interval during which the device should be switched on. “The EW devices generate powerful radiation that disrupts the radio signal transmission. This radiation very quickly drains the device’s power supply and also heats it up, so the device can only work effectively for a short period of time – up to 20 or 25 minutes,” explains Joe.

A., a military engineer, explains that many radio jamming devices produced in Ukraine use components imported from China and that those providers often sell spare parts to Ukraine taken from other used equipment. These have a shorter life span and also function worse than they should. That also undermines the performance of jamming devices.

Frequency analyzers

To help the military and other users of FPVs correctly determine when to switch on the electronic warfare system, which will jam communication in a particular frequency band, Ukrainian engineers are working on auxiliary devices. Anton, one of these developers, has created a radio frequency spectrum analyzer that allows him to detect a drone approaching a car in time to switch on the required electronic warfare channel. He designed this device at the request of his military brother and took his wishes into account. “The device “scans” the radio space and allows you to detect the drone, and, importantly, the frequency at which it flies, as well as determine whether it is approaching you,” Anton explains. According to Anton, his device uses a commercially available Tiny SA Ultra analyzer and, unlike an EW device, can operate continuously for several hours. When the frequency analyzer detects the drone’s approach and the frequency at which it is flying, it allows the EW device to be activated to jam the exact frequency required.

The military says that in addition to using an electronic warfare device, an experienced driver can protect himself from an enemy FPV hit by manoeuvring his car successfully. A week ago, a resident of Kurakhove managed to escape an enemy attack in this way. In the case of stationary targets, strong nets can help protect against an FPV drone attack, as the drone will simply get tangled in them before reaching the target.

Frequency analyzer Photo: Anton

Remote mining

The threat to civilians posed by FPV drones is not limited to direct attacks on equipment or people. In Kurakhove, police have to regularly neutralize Russian drones that they find in the community’s streets. These are the drones that fell to the ground when their batteries ran out, and when they fell their explosives did not detonate for various reasons. Those munitions still can explode when a car runs over them. In early September, when Russian FPVs first were found in Kurakhove, one would be discovered every few days. By mid-October the locals found several FPV drones every day. “Recently, we found eight in one day,” says Shchus. There are also drones that Russians deliberately land near or on the roads, using them as a way to remotely mine the area. On Friday, October 11th, a drone designed to explode when someone tried to pick it up from the ground was found near the main road in Kurakhove. Since civilian explosives experts are currently unable to reach front line areas like Kurakhove, such drones are destroyed with small arms by the police.

Protect civilians

Still, the greatest threat to civilians is posed by FPV drones that attack vehicles or people. When a car is attacked, the driver, unless he or she has specialized equipment, may not even notice the drone until it hits the vehicle. After the death of the Troianda na Rutsi volunteer, civilian volunteers access to the Kurakhove municipality was restricted. Now, the volunteers’ car waits for civilians at a designated point outside the municipality, to which they are brought by police in their vehicle. This has increased the burden of evacuating civilians on the police. The realization that an enemy FPV could appear overhead at any moment further exhausts the police. “It feels like you’re constantly wearing a barbed sweater over your naked body,” says Vasyl Pipa, one of the police rescuers.

The police already have experience with FPV drones. On October 4th, two days before the Kharkiv volunteer’s death, Pipa and his partner Yevhen Afendikov were on their way to evacuate a wounded civilian and managed to avoid a direct FPV hit only through skilful car manoeuvring.

During the evacuation of civilians, Kurakhove police cooperate with the local Voluntary Formation of the Territorial Community, a municipal paramilitary group that has also taken on the functions of helping civilians in Kurakhove. But there are tasks that only the police can perform in the town. For a long time, civilian ambulances have not been entering the territory of the municipality, and due to the shelling of the local State Emergency Service station, the rescue team’s duty station was also moved away. As a result, in Kurakhove, the police are the only civilian service that systematically provides first aid to civilians and takes the wounded outside the affected community. Every time they go on such trips, police crews and their civilian passengers, including children, are at risk of drone attacks.

For civilian services to continue providing assistance to residents in front line areas like Kurakhove, all their vehicles must be equipped with radio frequency analyzers and multi-channel electronic warfare devices. The only hope for civilians who do not use such devices is remaining vigilant and not staying in the open for long periods of time.

Kateryna Pryshchepa is a Ukrainian journalist and a contributing editor with New Eastern Europe.

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civil protection, drone warfare, eastern Ukraine, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine