Russian troops deployed a drone to hit a Proliska Humanitarian Mission car as it was approaching Kostyantynivka (Donetsk oblast) on 8 November. There were four people in the car: volunteers Yevhen Tkachov and Oleh Tkachenko, as well as two journalists from Spain and Austria. All four survived, reports Suspilne Donbas, which was informed about the incident by Yevhen Tkachov, the Proliska Humanitarian Mission head in Donetsk oblast.
Yevhen Tkachov said that the drone targeted the evacuation mission deliberately and hit the mission’s logo on the car.
“We were on our way to help people evacuate as volunteers, we had four or five addresses, with chaplain Oleh Tkachenko in his armored car. At the entrance to Kostyantynivka, Novoselivka district, we had just turned around, drove around the bend and noticed an optical fiber drone hovering 10 or 15 meters away from us. When we saw it, we stopped the car, and it started moving. We jumped out of the car, and at that moment it attacked,” Tkachov said.
“[They hit] the Proliska logo. It being the engine compartment is one thing, but it was a targeted strike, despite the humanitarian mission sticker,” he said.
The volunteer said that the journalists took everything without undue emotion: “They have a lot of experience. They have been in Donetsk oblast since the start of the invasion, they have seen a lot, so they took everything without undue emotion.”
Yevhen Tkachov believes that the strike at the Proliska car in Kostyantynivka was probably done by an FPV drone on a fiber optic cable with a cumulative projectile from an RPG launcher: it burned the car through. The damaged vehicle has already been pulled out of Kostyantynivka; it is yet unclear whether it can be repaired.
The volunteer said that last week the Russian army had tried to attack the Proliska car twice, but missed.
Austrian journalist Christian Wehrschütz was in the car at the time of the strike, reports ORF. According to ZiB (ORF’s news broadcast), Wehrschütz was in Donetsk oblast with a team from the humanitarian organization Proliska and a Spanish reporter. The team wanted to film the evacuation effort taking place in Kostyantynivka, a city near the front line.