Welcome to the Drone Safari: Hunting Humans in Kherson city

In the children’s home, they are already preparing for reopening and having a new way of life: the entire facility is being rebuilt underground.

Bedrooms for the younger children, and the older ones as well, separate rooms for boys and girls, a dining room, a gym, a study room, bathrooms, a community room for the activities. (We will cover the story of the children’s home in a separate feature.)

In Kherson, the noise of the town certainly no longer masks the buzzing sound of drones. Before the war, 280,000 people lived here, today about 60,000 remain, and they only go out on the streets when they really have to. They are already used to artillery, mortar and tank attacks, rocket and bomb attacks, as far as it is possible to get used to such circumstances. Air raids are less frequent now; they could go on all day long, but there is no point in that. However, since Russian drone attacks on civilians became this common - a few months ago - the people of Kherson have become even more hesitant to leave their homes. On foot, on bicycle, on bus, by car - nowhere is safe, since they never know when they might hear the sound of a drone flying overhead and following them.

The chasing and attacking of the population by drones has been given an eerily morbid name by the locals: safari. To the death, that is. The only difference is that people are hunted here, not animals.

From the Dnieper and beyond The southern Ukrainian town of Kherson was under Russian occupation for almost nine months before being liberated by Ukrainian forces in November 2022. However, the troops are separated not by the mudflats of a no-man's land between trenches, but by the Dnieper River. Since being pushed out, the Russians have been constantly shelling Kherson, the only county capital on the other side of the Dnieper that they have managed to capture - temporarily - over the past three years. Everything is now within reach: mortars, artillery, guided air bombs, the Russians are so close that they don't even need missiles.

Clear weather here does not cheer anyone up, because the Russian drones can see even better then. A few months ago, the foggy, rainy weather was a temporary respite from FPV drone attacks, but their technology is improving rapidly, so now it doesn't really matter how much fog there is, and thermal cameras make it less important whether it's day or night.

Safari without rules: anyone, anywhere, anytime

The Financial Times quotes local authorities in its article saying that since last summer, there have been more than 9,500 drone strikes in the Kherson region, injuring more than 500 people and killing 36. According to the Kyiv Independent, in July and August 2024, Kherson was hit by an average of 100 drone strikes a day, and with autumn arriving, even these numbers have risen dramatically, with a record 330 drone strikes on 9 September alone.

One might even say that there are as many Russian drones hovering over Kherson as there are stars in the sky, and they know everything about the locals.

They also know that when a new car arrives in town, it is likely to bring either journalists or soldiers, who always mean a target for the Russians. The information gathered by surveillance drones is relayed to smaller attack drones (known as FPVs, or first-person-view drones), which then do the dirty work. The FPVs have a flight range of between 20 and 60 minutes, and experts say that Russians rarely "fly them home." When the drone operator detects that the battery is running low, they just look for a target to slam it into, be it a person, a vehicle or a building.

Whether it's civilian or military doesn't matter. Drones are hovering over bus stops, schools, homes and hospitals, attacking women buying groceries, children playing in parks, cyclists on their way to work, houses, cemeteries or just setting fire to whatever they can. They are targeting ambulances, vehicles carrying humanitarian aid, so there is practically no corner of life in Kherson that is not affected by drone torture.

The part of the city closest to the riverbank, where most drone attacks happen, has been declared a "red zone" by the army. Life has almost come to a standstill here, even though some local residents remained, especially retired people. There is no gas, water, electricity or communal heating, and no public transportation. The inhabitants only go out when they really need to, and even then they try to shield themselves for as long as possible, hiding under eaves and trees, moving from wall to wall. Even if there weren't so many roads destroyed, it would be useless to drive. It would be faster, but cars are also easier targets. With the engine roaring, it's harder to hear the distinctive whirring sound of drones, at least the ones that land low enough to be heard.

"Dear civilians!"

The Russians leave little doubt that they are deliberately attacking civilians with drones. Not only because these small FPV drones represent a new level of precision, providing a close-up view of the target immediately before the attack so the operator knows exactly who they are about to strike, but also because the Russians regularly boast in various Telegram groups about their drone strike footage, for example dropping explosives on civilians walking in the street. Deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime under international humanitarian law.

In his Telegram post, for example, the user "Moses" warns civilians in Kherson like this: "Dear civilians! In order to save your lives and property (cars, houses), we need information about the location of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the village of Antonovka (Kherson region). We guarantee full immunity against our drones, we guarantee anonymity. You can love Ukraine, we do not forbid it, but we must know exactly where the enemy is. If you help us, we won't touch you??"

And the Telegram post below shows a camera image of a drone, with the following text complete with a winking emoji: "This is a strong 300 [Russian code for injured soldier - Ed.] Evacuation is not allowed."

Destroy with everything you can

The explosives dropped from drones are often improvised: mortar shells, grenades, metal cans filled with shrapnel or nails, incendiary bombs or petrol cylinders that set fire to everything on impact. Other drones carry more powerful explosives, including armour-piercing mines and RPG warheads, which are more often used against humanitarian aid and military vehicles. Ammunition disguised as ordinary household items and small, otherwise banned PFM-1 anti-personnel mines are also used. The latter roughly resemble fallen leaves, so they are very difficult to detect, especially in a city besieged for more than two years. PFM-1 mines rarely cause instant death, but they more often mutilate the victim. Ambulances and hospitals are constant targets.

The weapons do not even need to be assembled to the latest generation of super drones, the Russians often convert simple commercially available drones.

Terror? Drone operator training?

Not even the Ukrainians are sure what the purpose behind the Russian drone attacks is, beyond terrorising Ukrainian civilians. It is possible that across the river, the Russians are training drone operators who are practising on civilians in Kherson. According to several experts, the use of drones to hunt down civilians is a new element in the Russian military's training regime. The Centre for Information Resilience has concluded that the vast majority of drone strikes in Kherson have been targeted against vehicles, particularly non-military trucks, cars, ambulances and buses. This suggests that the military may be practicing targeting moving objects, presumably with the intention of using this tactic elsewhere on the front line. CIR reports that "it is a realistic possibility that Russian units on the right bank of the Dnieper River are using civilian targets for live training exercises".

It is also possible that the ongoing drone terror is intended to create a buffer zone by making life in the red zone completely impossible, or perhaps to prepare an offensive to try to reoccupy at least part of the west bank of the Dnieper.

"They know you are coming anyway"

Journalists may enter the city only with the prior permission of the commander of the military district concerned, they can only visit pre-arranged locations, and to some locations they need a special military escort. Just looking around and wandering on the streets are not recommended. They have to wear protective equipment under the jacket, and foreign journalists must have their phones switched off to prevent the Russians from tracking them. They warn in advance, "they know you're coming anyway". In the car, one of the windows should be slightly rolled down to increase the chance of detecting the distinctive sound of the drones.

During our interview in the children’s home, the sound of Russian shells from across the Dnieper River could be heard constantly. The director of the home no longer noticed anything, he was so used to it.

Whilst conducting our interview the military’s press officer informed us that a Russian FPV drone was hovering over the facility.