09/09/2026
By the third pickup of the day, the unsettling sound of Russian drones had become a near constant presence for the four volunteers of Adapted Relief Collective (ARC). Nine residents of Kramatorsk had requested evacuation this mid-August day, and the small team of humanitarian workers had already heard the distant but unmistakable buzzing of Russian first-person-view (FPV) drones on three separate occasions. As their minibus and cargo van approached the next pickup point, a fourth drone was detected. This time, it was much closer — and getting louder.
“When we heard the FPV, we got everyone inside the house as fast as we could,” recalled Jonathan Lan, the 29-year-old founder of ARC. “We couldn’t see it, but I heard it explode, and it hit something on the next street over. We could hear the debris and metal clanking as it fell to the ground, so it was fu***ng close, within 50 meters [164 feet] for sure.”
After waiting inside for the immediate threat to pass, the group continued on with their scheduled pickups for the day, ultimately evacuating nine people, six dogs and nineteen cats to locations further west without encountering another drone.
“We went to Kramatorsk three times in the last week, and I can say each time we either saw or heard FPVs,” continued Lan. “Nothing went wrong. But the potential for things going wrong was very high honestly, and you know, I could see that the end of times for us going there in unarmored vehicles is here. That probably was actually weeks ago, but it’s certainly here now.”
After four and a half years of full-scale war, Ukraine’s historic eastern city of Kramatorsk is rapidly transforming into an ever-expanding, drone-fueled kill zone as Russian forces continue their slow, bloody advance toward the urban agglomeration known as Ukraine’s “fortress belt.”
