Just before noon one day Serhiy Dobrovolsky, a hardware trader, returned to his home in Kherson in southern Ukraine. He stepped into his yard, lit a cigarette and chatted with his next-door neighbour. Suddenly, they heard the sound of a drone buzzing overhead.
Angela, Serhiy’s wife of 32 years, says she saw her husband run and take cover as the drone dropped a grenade. “He died before the ambulance arrived. I was told he was very unlucky, because a piece of shrapnel pierced his heart,” she says, breaking down.
Serhiy is one of 30 civilians killed in a sudden surge in Russian drone attacks in Kherson since 1 July, the city’s military administration told the BBC. They have recorded more than 5,000 drone attacks over the same period, with more than 400 civilians injured.
Drones have changed warfare in Ukraine, with both Ukraine and Russia using them against military targets.
But the BBC has heard eyewitness testimony and seen credible evidence that suggest Russia is using drones also against civilians in the frontline city of Kherson.
“They can see who they are killing,” says Angela. “Is this how they want to fight, by just bombing people walking in the streets?”
If Russia is found to be intentionally targeting civilians, it would be a war crime.
The Russian military did not respond to the BBC’s questions about the allegations. Since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia has consistently denied deliberately targeting 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 examined by BBC Verify.
In each video, we see through the remote operator’s camera as they track the movements of a pedestrian or motorist in civilian clothing, often dropping grenades which sometimes appear to seriously injure or kill their target.
BBC Verify was also able to identify a Telegram channel which has the earliest public copies yet seen of five of the six videos analysed.
They were each posted with goading and threats to the Ukrainian public, including claims that all vehicles were legitimate targets and that people should minimise their public movement. The injured people were also insulted, called “pigs” or in one case mocked for being a woman.
The account posting some of these drone videos also posted images of boxed and unboxed drones, and other images of equipment, thanking people for their donations.
BBC