An operation method of a first terminal, in a communication system supporting sidelink communication, may include transmitting one or more sidelink data to a second terminal; performing a monitoring operation to receive one or more hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) responses for the one or more sidelink data from the second terminal; and declaring a radio link failure (RLF) for a radio link between the first terminal and the second terminal when the one or more HARQ responses indicate a discontinuous transmission (DTX).