Russian drones hunt civilians in streets of southern Ukrainian city

KHERSON, Ukraine - Russian forces have escalated indiscriminate drone attacks against civilians in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, killing and maiming scores of people in what locals have described as a “human safari.”

Unlike elsewhere on the 600-mile-long front, Russian forces in Kherson are just across the river from the city and are using small drones to harass the population, either by crashing into targets and exploding or by dropping grenades and small camouflaged mines. The situation is fairly unique compared with the rest of Ukraine, where Russian troops must use longer-range weapons to reach civilians.

Humanitarian operations and city services such as fire trucks and buses seem to be under particular threat, officials said, though children on bicycles and older people gathering at markets have also been struck.

Punishing the city

Kherson was the first major Ukrainian city captured by Russia after the full-scale invasion in 2022, enduring nine months of occupation before it was liberated. But even after Ukrainian troops swept through the city, the Russians repositioned their forces a short distance away across the Dnieper River, maintaining pressure with regular fire that locals described as a kind of punishment.

But the past few months have been the worst Kherson has seen, even under the occupation, residents said. Between July and October, drones and mines killed 133 people, according to the Kherson military administration, and injured 1,350.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to questions about its forces’ drone-targeting policies in Kherson.

Several people reported unbearable stress and anxiety over attacks that can happen anytime and anyplace.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the regional governor, said Russian forces had launched nearly 7,000 drone attacks in the Kherson region since August. The government is providing electronic warfare equipment to military units to help combat the problem, he said.

“This is targeted terrorism,” Prokudin said. “They see and understand who they are attacking, and at the same time they boast on social media with videos of how they kill and injure civilians.”

Kherson has been under uniquely difficult pressure because Ukrainian troops cannot keep up with Russia’s drone sorties, said Solomiya Khoma, head of international cooperation at the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

“We see this as another method of pressure and terror on the civilian population, in order to further provoke pressure on the Ukrainian authorities to push them to negotiations,” she said.

Living in the red zone

Ambulances are a high-priority target, followed by city buses and civilian cars, said Yevhen Piatak, a volunteer with the aid group Global Empowerment Mission. The attacks have created an urgent need for fire extinguishers, he said, because drones equipped with thermite have triggered infernos and drone pilots have tried to hit responding fire trucks.

“They’re shooting at everything that moves,” Piatak said.

Telegram social media pages tied to Russian military units have warned civilians they would attack any vehicles in the area, with some circulating maps of the targeted zone as wide swaths of red along the river. “This is one of our key goals,” one post said, encouraging locals to report where Ukrainian military assets were to save themselves. Attacks are most common in that red zone but have also occurred farther out, officials and observers said.

The only relief has come from rainstorms sweeping off the Black Sea, which ground the surveillance and attack drones. Thunder and lightning crackled over Kherson on an October afternoon, allowing people to line up for humanitarian aid with some confidence they would not be struck.

But on clear and sunny days, desperation hangs in the air, and locals discuss hard decisions on whether to stay or go.

Residents also describe how the drones are salting the whole Kherson area with small antipersonnel mines. The mostly plastic munitions, PFM-1S, are commonly called petal mines because of their distinct and innocuous shape. They explode when stepped on and are typically green or brown to camouflage them on the ground.

Petal mines are everywhere, locals said, and on community social media pages, they warn each other where they have been spotted.

Russia is not a signatory of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that outlaws such weapons, and it has used them widely in the war. There is also evidence that Ukraine has deployed them on the battlefield despite being a signatory.

The saturation of drones buzzing above and mines underfoot has proved overwhelming for civilians. A recent evacuation train from Kherson rolled into the station at nearby Mykolaiv with several families and a few people traveling alone, their eyes darkened and bleary from the constant attacks at night.

Olena Boiko sat next to her 8-year-old son Henrikh and recounted her breaking point in early October. A drone hovered above four children playing in a yard, including Henrikh. She told them to run to safety as she drew the attention of the drone from under a tree. It eventually flew away. Henrikh confided that he was scared, she said, and they left to join her sister in Norway via Poland. Her disabled husband was left behind.

“I realized the child had to be saved,” Boiko said, as Henrikh stared blankly at her phone.

Amid the tales of desperation and reaching their limit, many told the story of a daughter who tried to get her father to safety: Oleksandra Solonko and her efforts to evacuate her father had become a grim warning for the people of Kherson.

Oleskandra’s story

Her father, Petro, lived in the village of Antonivka, next to Kherson and dangerously close to Russian lines. Under constant onslaught, the prewar population of 13,000 had shrunk to just 400 to 500, mostly older people who could not leave easily. Solonko decided he had to go.

Two days before she made it back to Kherson to put her father on the evacuation train, her phone rang. He had been killed in an explosion while fetching water.

Petro was not an easy man, and their relationship had been strained for a long time. She described a hard drinker who had left his family behind and started another, then left that one too. But in recent years, they’d grown closer.

“He was my father,” she said, “no matter who he was.”

Solonko split her time between working in Poland and Ukraine and taking care of her three pit bulls with her father. She helped stock her father’s home with berries from her garden. Solonko was touched, she said, to discover he was quietly feeding a dozen dogs left abandoned by their owners.

Back in Poland, she heard about how bad things were getting in Kherson. A friend warned her against coming back, saying it had become too dangerous. A woman she knew had picked up a cloth in the street attached to a petal mine, blowing off her arm and burning her face. Solonko was frightened for her father, she said, and was compelled to act.

“I told him, ‘Dad, please, when you walk, look at your feet, don’t pick anything up. If you see a bag of gold, step over it,’” she recalled. Her plan was to get him on the train and settle him in the peaceful Carpathian region of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Then her worst fears were realized.

For days, no one could recover his remains because it was too dangerous, and his bloated body lay there, she said, despite frantic calls to the police and other officials for help.

There was no proper service when his body was finally collected, she said, as funerals had become another casualty of the Russian air campaign. A priest near the morgue signed the cross as her father’s remains passed by in a car. Morgue workers said it was too risky for her to view the body. All she was given, she said, was a lock of his hair.

Solonko’s sister calls her from Norway every day, she said, and urges her son to persuade her to leave. She is at work collecting any remaining photos of her mother and father. She has not yet decided to evacuate, she said, despite her hometown shattering piece by piece.

“Nothing is keeping me here, physically,” she said. “My heart is in Kherson.”