Russia is deliberately attacking civilians in southern Ukraine with drones, residents say

By Lauren Kent and Kosta Gak, CNN

Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — In the city of Kherson, southern Ukraine, civilians have started to hope for heavy rain – the only weather conditions that prevent Russian drones from flying overhead, they say.

Drone attacks on ordinary people living here have sharply increased since the beginning of fall, with residents reporting Russian drone attacks on pedestrians, cars, buses and even an ambulance, according to local officials.

And the injury reports suggest that drones are targeting civilians – in some cases hitting elderly people and children.

Last week, a 76-year-old woman suffered serious injuries when her car was hit in an urban, residential district in the center of Kherson, according to the local military administration. In another October attack on the outskirts of the city, in the suburb of Antonivka, officials said a 69-year-old woman was killed when a drone dropped explosives on a public bus.

Authorities said at least 14 people have been killed by drones since the beginning of September, with a further 222 adults and three children injured.

“They don’t care who they shoot at. Grandma, grandpa, it doesn’t matter. Man, woman, it doesn’t matter,” said Tetyana Yakovleva, 47, a factory worker and humanitarian volunteer from the Antonivka suburb. Locals have nicknamed the street leading there “the road of death,” as it’s in close range of nearby Russian forces and was once a focal point of the fighting.

Kherson is the largest Ukrainian city to sit on the front line and was the first major city to fall under Russian occupation, in early March 2022, remaining in enemy hands until it was liberated eight months later. In June last year, parts of the city were flooded when the Nova Kakhovka dam, 36 miles up the Dnipro river in Russian-held territory, was destroyed. Today, the threat of occupation still looms just across the river, where Russian military positions are literally within sight.

Yakovleva stayed in her village during the occupation and has been injured multiple times since the start of the war, including by shrapnel. Most recently, a drone attacked a shelter where she was volunteering, helping to provide humanitarian aid to civilians.

“The drone hovered over us, hovered for a long time. And then it dropped a grenade next to the door,” Yakovleva told CNN. “We were all shell-shocked.”

“It’s really scary… We look at the sky before we go out. We make sure there’s no buzzing,” she added. “Bad weather now is luck for us.”

Two Ukrainian Armed Forces sources operating in the Kherson region couldn’t give CNN any military reasoning behind the Russian drone strikes. “It’s just to terrorize the locals,” one of the military sources said.

Russia attacked the area with more than 2,700 drones in September and had already launched 1,500 this month by October 17, according to the head of the Kherson region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.

Difficult to combat

The frequency of the attacks and the drones’ small size make them difficult for Ukrainian forces to thwart. The drones also move at high speed, making it nearly impossible for civilians to escape if they are in the crosshairs.

“A lot of these drones operate on wavelengths and at altitudes way below air defense systems. They’re too small as well,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, DC-based think tank. She said the “sheer mass” of Russian drones – many of which are small, commercially available units that are easy to deploy – is putting tremendous pressure on Ukrainian detection systems.

ISW found that drone strikes on the Kherson region notably increased around mid-July 2024. That coincides with when Ukrainian forces began to withdraw from positions on the Russian-occupied eastern side of the river, in the village of Krynky, in early July 2024.

Russian forces may have shifted from targeting Ukrainian forces in Krynky to targeting the broader western bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson, Stepanenko told CNN.

Analysts say Russian troops appear to be deploying large numbers of drones for several reasons – one of which is a pressure to show they are maintaining fire, to avoid being moved elsewhere.

“At least in part, there’s this element of these forces trying to show that they’re doing something, so that they’re not pulled to a different front line, like the Pokrovsk direction,” Stepanenko said. “It’s also to experiment with the new drones that they have.”

Disturbingly, multiple Russian bloggers have bragged online about fatal drone strikes.

Several Russian military blogger accounts on Telegram posted about an unofficial “Red Zone” in Kherson at the beginning of September, declaring that “all critical infrastructure” and “any vehicular movement will be considered a legitimate target.”

After that, there was an uptick in videos posted on Telegram that appeared to show Ukrainian civilians being attacked or running from drones, with Russian commentators mocking them.

One video filmed from overhead, geolocated by CNN, shows an explosive device being dropped on a Ukrainian woman riding a bicycle in Antonivka, with comments calling her derogatory names and claiming they will “find her” because she is the daughter of a Ukrainian soldier. It detonates very close to her but she pedals on.

Another aerial video posted online shows a man in civilian clothing trying to hide from a drone under a tree. CNN was unable to geolocate the video, but the Russian Telegram account that posted it blogs about the Kherson region specifically. The blogger claimed it shows a member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and mocked the man for crawling on all fours.

ISW reported that unofficial Russian Telegram channels have claimed their forces are trying to destroy all vehicles so that Ukrainian forces can’t move. “But if you look at the footage, it actually shows a lot of civilian vehicles” being hit, Stepanenko said.

Although the Russian military has not officially commented on the “Red Zone” in Kherson, civilians in the region told CNN they are aware of the declaration and are scared to become a target for Russian drones.

‘It’s like a safari on us’

Intentionally directing attacks against civilian infrastructure and civilians who are not directly taking part in hostilities are considered war crimes under international law.

Russia has been repeatedly accused of targeting Ukrainian civilians by Kyiv, its Western allies, the International Criminal Court and the United Nations. Throughout the war, Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, residents of the Kherson region say no target here seems to be off limits.

On Monday, an ambulance was hit in a Russian drone strike on an urban area of Kherson, injuring two paramedics. It marks the second drone attack on an ambulance in recent weeks, with another hit in early October about 15 miles south of the city. A 49-year-old woman and the 60-year-old ambulance driver were seriously injured, according to the region’s military administration.

“In recent months, it has been impossible to leave the house,” said Natalya, 46, another Antonivka resident, who asked to be identified by her first name only due to safety concerns. She was injured in the same strike on the humanitarian aid shelter as Tetyana Yakovleva.

“We survived the occupation here. We also survived the flood. But these drone attacks are unbearable,” Natalya told CNN. “It’s like a safari on us.”

CNN’s Katy Ling contributed to this report.

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