Drone strikes on civilians suggest a new tactic by Russian terrorists in Ukraine

Just before noon one day Serhiy Dobrovolsky, a building materials trader, returned to his home in Kherson in southern Ukraine. He went into his yard and lit a cigarette and talked to his neighbor. Suddenly they heard the sound of a drone overhead.

Angela, Serhiy’s wife who has been married for 32 years, says she saw her husband running to hide when an idle plane dropped a bomb. “He died before the ambulance arrived. I was told that he was unlucky, because a piece of debris pierced his heart,” he said, breaking down.

Serhiy is one of 30 civilians killed by Russian airstrikes in Kherson since July 1, military officials told the BBC. They recorded more than 5,000 drone attacks during the same period, injuring more than 400 civilians.

Drones have changed the war in Ukraine, with Ukraine and Russia using them against military targets.

But the BBC heard eyewitness testimony and saw credible evidence suggesting Russia is using drones again against residents of the key city of Kherson.

“They see who they’re killing,” Angela said. “Is this the way they want to fight, by just bombing people walking in the streets?”

If it is found that Russia deliberately targeted civilians, it would be a war crime.

The Russian military did not respond to the BBC’s inquiries about the allegations. Since the February 2022 all-out attack, Russia has consistently denied that it deliberately targeted civilians.

Evidence of apparent drone attacks on civilians can be seen in numerous videos shared on Ukrainian and Russian social media, six of which were checked by BBC Verify.

In each video, we see through a remote control operator’s camera as they track the movements of a pedestrian or plainclothes driver, who often drops bombs that sometimes appear to seriously injure or kill their targets.

BBC Verify was also able to identify the Telegram channel with the original public copies seen in five of the six videos analysed.

Each was sent with pressure and threats on the Ukrainian public, including claims that all traffic was targeted and that people should limit their public transportation. Injured people are also insulted, called pigs or in one case they are teased for being a woman.

The account posting some of these drone videos also posted pictures of boxed and unboxed drones, and other pictures of the equipment, thanking people for their donations.

Kherson’s military commanders told the BBC that Russia has changed the type of aircraft it uses and the city’s electronic systems will no longer be able to intercept most of them.

“You feel like you’re always being hunted, like someone is always watching you, and they can drop fireworks at any time. It’s a terrible thing,” said Kristina Synia, who works at a relief center about one kilometer (0.6 miles) from the Dnipro River.

To get to the center without being followed by drones, we drive at high speed, take the cover of trees while parking, and quickly enter the house.

On the shelf behind Kristina, a small device monitors the threat outside – it beeps every time it detects a drone. It was buzzing every few minutes while we were there – we usually get the presence of at least four drones.

The trauma is visible on the faces of the residents we meet, who have dared to leave their homes to save food. Valentyna Mykolaivna wipes her eyes, “We are in a very bad situation. When we go out, we go from one tree to another, we take shelter. Every day they attack public buses, every day they bomb us using drones,” she said.

Olena Kryvchun says she narrowly missed a drone strike on her car. Minutes before he returned to his car after visiting a friend, a bomb fell on the roof above the driver’s seat, tore through one side of the car and left behind metal, plastic and glass.

“If I had been in my car, I would have died. I look like a military man, my car looks like a military car?” he says. He works as a cleaner and the car was important to his job. He has no money to repair it.

Olena says that drones are still more scary than shooting. “When we hear a shell exploding on the other side of the river, we have time to react. With drones, you can easily miss their sound. They are quick, they see you and they strike.”

Ben Dusing, who runs the aid center, says that drones spread more fear than shooting, which keeps people from moving. If the drone closes in on you, the truth is that it’s almost ‘game over’ at that point. There is no defense about it,” he said.

In the past few months, said Oleksandr Prokudin, a spokesman for the military administration in Kherson, the Russian military has also started using drones to drop mines on pedestrian, car and bus routes.

He said the explosion was caused by butterfly mines – small, anti-personnel mines that can slide to the ground and detonate on contact – which were covered with leaves to hide them.

The BBC could not confirm the use of drones to deploy mines in Kherson.

Olena says that as winter approaches, the fear of drones will increase. “When the leaves fall from the trees, there will be many victims. Because when you’re on the street, there’s nowhere to hide.”

We were able to find six videos that we analyzed, all of which were filmed in the eastern part of Kherson, by identifying unique features on the city’s streets. In another case – when a drone dropped an explosive on two pedestrians, injuring one of them so much that he could not walk – this was a turn at the T-point, pointing to the district of Dniprovs’kyi or the nearby suburb of Antonivka, instead of the center of the city of Kherson.

Once we identified the likely location, we were able to match the visible landmarks in the video with satellite images – in this case buildings and pylons – confirming where the attack took place in the city.

To try to find out where the videos first appeared publicly, we used a few frames from each person by using search engines. Usually the previous result was a certain Telegram channel, reposting dating on sites like X or Reddit in a few hours.

Since we had the location of each attack, we were able to calculate the time of recording using shadows and cross-referencing weather records to find the most likely date.

Four of the videos we reviewed were posted to the Telegram channel the day after the potential recording, and in one instance, were posted eight hours later on the same day.

Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson, Anastasiia Levchenko and Volodymyr Lozhko. Confirmation work by Richard Irvine-Brown