A short road trip turned into a frightening escape from a Russian drone when Anastasiia Bilchenko joined other aid workers to deliver help to a small town in eastern Ukraine.
Bilchenko was making her second visit to Zolochiv, which is about 20 kilometres from Russian forces, and thought it might be her last.
But when she tells the story of this encounter, she introduces it almost casually as a feature of her work in Kharkiv, one of the most bombarded cities in the war.
That is because drones have become such a part of ordinary life in her home city that there seems nothing remarkable about having to dodge death on the road to a nearby township.
“It was a dangerous situation,” she says during an interview a few days after the events.
“There was an FPV drone just flying after our car, and I was terrified. We could see, from our drone detector, that the eyes of the drone were following us.”
Because the danger came from a “first-person-view” drone, or FPV, the aid workers knew there was a Russian operator at a remote location who was watching them with the camera on the front of the device.
The operator could destroy them and their vehicle if he or she chose. Everything depended on the distance from the drone to the car. Their first move was to accelerate, leaving the drone far behind them. Their next decision was to find cover.
“We stopped in a location near some trees and buildings and quickly ran out of the car,” she says.
Bilchenko barely mentions what happened next because it seems insignificant. The group emerged safely. The drone, lost behind them, searched for other targets. She tells this story as a casual aside in the safety of Gdansk, in Poland, where she is meeting donors at the Ukraine Recovery Conference.
Her escape, with her colleagues, is a reminder that the front line in the war is not a line at all – it is a widening kill zone whose size is determined by how far Russian and Ukrainian drones can reach. Anything below the drones can be a target.
The commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces, Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, estimated in May that the kill zone had reached a depth of 25 kilometres on either side of the front line, based on the regularity of the drone strikes. He also told Ukrainska Pravda, a media outlet, that the threat would evolve with the rise of autonomous systems, FPV drone crews, bomber drones and electronic warfare.
“I would not advise anyone to approach the grey frontline zone within 25 kilometres on either side without proper preparation, necessity, protective equipment and everything else,” he said.
But this is where aid workers may need to travel – and it is where Ukrainian civilians still need help.
Bilchenko chooses to work in these conditions because she was born and raised near Kharkiv. She is the partnership officer at Peaceful Heaven of Kharkiv, a not-for-profit group that started at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and now operates across the country with about 440 staff.
The organisation began by offering hot meals in frontline areas, then expanded into caring for women and children, and now also has teams removing landmines. One of its financial supporters is the Minderoo Foundation, the Australian donor set up by Andrew and Nicola Forrest.
The reason Bilchenko was heading to Zolochiv was to support a shelter for children that is run with help from UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. Some of these spaces are underground shelters.
“It’s a space where children can relax, socialise, have some conversations with their peers, and be with their parents,” she says.
Ukrainians have little time to prepare for airstrikes when the air raid alarms ring out, but the time between an alert and a strike is even shorter in Kharkiv, given that it is so close to the Russian border. People in the capital might get a warning 10 minutes before a strike; in Kharkiv, it might be only 40 seconds.
“Maybe one week ago, I woke up at night, but it wasn’t from an alarm,” says Bilchenko. “It was an attack, and there were maybe four or five explosions.
“Kharkiv is really in danger. But, nevertheless, we understand that people near the frontline areas really need help.”
While the city had about 1.4 million people before 2022, there is no reliable public guide to its population today. Moving west can be expensive because housing costs have risen in safer districts; many people want to stay in their homes.
Bilchenko graduated with a law degree in Kharkiv – it was a great student city before the war, she says – but she left in 2022 to begin a master’s degree in international relations in Estonia. She returned in September 2024.
“I understood that I really needed to help Ukrainians in Ukraine,” she says. “And Kharkiv, it’s my love. It is really the best city.”
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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