Democracy Dies in DarknessEuropeA soldier taught a 12-year-old how to disable the fiber-optic drones that Russia has been using to hunt Ukrainian civilians in a campaign the U.N. has labeled a war crime.Today at 5:00 a.m. EDTAnatolii Prokhorenko, 12, disabled a Russian fiber-optic drone last month that was heading toward his younger siblings and other children at their house in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. (Oksana Parafeniuk/For The Washington Post)9 min and CHERNIHIV, Ukraine — On a cool evening last month, 12-year-old Anatolii Prokhorenko was up in a pear tree, cutting off a damaged branch for a neighbor, when he heard the buzz of a drone.That sound often means death in Ukraine, and not just for soldiers on the front lines. Increasingly, civilians are tracked, chased and attacked by small, commercially available drones equipped with cameras, rigged with explosives and steered by fingers-on-joysticks a dozen miles away.
In northern Ukraine, it was boy vs. Russian drone. The boy won.
A soldier taught a 12-year-old how to disable the fiber-optic drones that Russia has been using to hunt Ukrainian civilians in a campaign the U.N. has labeled a war crime.
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