No one was hurt when a Russian first person view (FPV) drone slammed into a vehicle in the Donetsk city of Kramatorsk on July 15, but an image documenting the strike has captured the fearsome destructive power of the aerial weapon.
Iryna Rybakova and Maks Bondarenko were driving through the suburbs of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on the afternoon of July 15 when the pair spotted a large FPV quadcopter fitted with an explosive warhead that appeared to be hunting for something to hit.
Staff sergeant Maks Bondarenko attempts to shoot down a Russian FPV quadcopter moments before it targeted a vehicle in Kramatorsk on July 15.
“The drone was flying high then low looking for targets,” Rybakova, a press officer with Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade, told RFE/RL.
Rybakova and Bondarenko pulled over near a busy crossroads and Bondarenko began firing at the quadcopter with his rifle. Within seconds a blue SUV vehicle pulled into the intersection.
An FPV drone strikes a vehicle in Kramatorsk on July 15.
“I saw the drone fly toward the car, then a man jumped out of it and ran around the corner,” Rybakova says. The drone exploded directly into the driver’s seat of the empty SUV at the same moment Rybakova squeezed the shutter on her Sony camera.
The photo captured the full extent of the explosion of the drone’s warhead bursting into a fireball that dwarfed the car.
“I’ve never filmed anything like it before,” Rybakova said in a social media post documenting the incident. “I immediately saw that I had caught the explosion.”
Rybakova says the drone was of a type measuring about 38 centimeters across. The large quadcopter variants are capable of carrying warheads, such as large mortar rounds, weighing several kilograms.
Dust and debris seen in the moment after the July 15 drone strike.
Kramatorsk lies 20 kilometers from the current front lines of the ongoing Russian invasion but has long been a target for unjammable fiber optic drones capable of flying tens of kilometers to strike targets.
Since early July, Russian drone teams have reportedly ramped up FPV drone attacks on the city, including by landing “waiter” drones on isolated rooftops under cover of night. The stationary drones conserve batteries until dawn then watch for potential targets that often have little time to react when the drones take off and attack.
On July 8, a 28-year-old woman was killed by an FPV drone in Kramatorsk, and on July 17 two civilian men, both in their 60s, were killed near the city by the same type of weapon.
Local volunteer Bohdan Zuyakov (left) helps to extinguish the car after the drone strike.
The driver of the car was a Ukrainian serviceman, but Rybakova declined to give any further details.
“He said he had just left a [combat] position and was very disappointed because he had recently spent $2,000 repairing the car,” she said. “We sent him all the [photos and video] so that he could crowdfund for a new car.”