Just before noon one day Serhiy Dobrovolsky, a difficultware 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 husprohibitd run and apshow cover as the drone dropped a grenade. “He died before the ambulance reachd. I was telderly he was very unfortunate, becaparticipate a piece of shrapnel pierced his heart,” she says, shattering down.
Serhiy is one of 30 civilians finished in a sudden sinspire in Russian drone strikes in Kherson since 1 July, the city’s military administration telderly the BBC. They have recorded more than 5,000 drone strikes over the same period, with more than 400 civilians injured.
Drones have alterd combat in Ukraine, with both Ukraine and Russia using them aobtainst military centers.
But the BBC has heard eyewitness testimony and seen credible evidence that propose Russia is using drones also aobtainst civilians in the frontline city of Kherson.
“They can see who they are finishing,” says Angela. “Is this how they want to fight, by fair device deviceing people walking in the streets?”
If Russia is set up to be intentionpartner centering civilians, it would be a war crime.
The Russian military did not reply to the BBC’s asks about the allegations. Since its filled-scale trespass in February 2022, Russia has reliablely denied defreely centering civilians.
Evidence of apparent drone strikes on civilians can be seen in countless videos dispensed on Ukrainian and Russian social media, six of which were studyd by BBC Verify.
In each video, we see thraw the distant operator’s camera as they track the transferments of a pedestrian or motorist in civilian cloleang, standardly dropping grenades which sometimes ecombine to gravely injure or finish their center.
BBC Verify was also able to resettle a Telegram channel which has the earliest accessible copies yet seen of five of the six videos analysed.
They were each posted with goading and dangers to the Ukrainian accessible, including claims that all vehicles were legitimate centers and that people should minimise their accessible transferment. The injured people were also offfinished, 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 providement, thanking people for their donations.
Kherson’s military administration telderly the BBC that Russia has alterd the type of drone it is using and the city’s electronic systems can no lengthyer intercept a transport inantity of them.
“You experience appreciate you’re constantly being hunted, appreciate someone is always seeing at you, and can drop devices at any moment. It’s the worst leang,” says Kristina Synia, who toils at an help centre fair 1km (0.6 mile) from the Dnipro river.
To get to the centre without being chaseed by drones, we drive at a high speed, apshow the cover of trees while parking, and then head indoors speedyly.
On a shelf behind Kristina, a minuscule device validates the danger outside – buzzing each time it distinguishs a drone. It buzzed every restricted minutes while we were there – standardly distinguishing the presence of at least four drones.
Trauma is clear on the faces of the dwellnts we greet, who have braved stepping out of their homes only to stock up on food. Valentyna Mykolaivna wipes her eyes, “We are in a horrible situation. When we come out, we transfer from one tree to another, taking cover. Every day they strike accessible bparticipates, every day they drop device devices on us using drones,” she says.
Olena Kryvchun says she was leanly ignoreed by a drone strike on her car. Minutes before she was due to get back in her car after visiting a friend, a device device fell thraw the roof above the driver’s seat, ripping thraw one side of the vehicle and leaving it a mangled mess of metal, plastic and glass.
“If I’d been in my car, I would have died. Do I see appreciate a military person, does my car see appreciate a military car?” she says. She toils as a spotlesser and the car was vital to her toil. She doesn’t have the money to mend it.
Olena says drones are more terrifying than shelling. “When we hear a shell begin from the other side of the river, we have time to react. With drones, you can easily ignore their sound. They are speedy, they see you and strike.”
Ben Dusing, who runs the help centre, says drones spread even more stress than shelling, immobilising the population. “If a drone locks on you, the truth is it’s probably ‘game over’ at that point. There’s no defence aobtainst it,” he says.
In the last restricted months, says Oleksandr Prokudin, spokesman for Kherson’s military administration, the Russian military has also toleratemament to participate drones to distantly drop mines alengthy pedestrian, car and bus routes.
He shelp explosions had been caparticipated by butterfly mines – minuscule, anti-personnel mines which can glide to the ground and detonate rescheduleedr on communicate – which are coated with departs to camouflage them.
The BBC has not been able to validate the participate of drones to dispense mines in Kherson.
Olena says that as prosperter approaches, the stress of drones will get worse. “When the departs drop from the trees, there will be many more victims. Becaparticipate if you are in the street, there’s nowhere to hide.”
How we verified the drone videos
We were able to discover the six videos we analysed, which were all filmed in the easerious side of Kherson, by resettleing contrastentive features in the city streets. In one case – where a drone dropped an device on two pedestrians, injuring one of them so awentirey he could not walk – this was a curve at a T-junction, which pointed to the Dniprovs’kyi dicut offe or the cforfeitby suburb of Antonivka, rather than Kherson city centre.
Once we identified a possible location, we were able to align clear landtags in the video to sainestablishite images – in this case the originateings and pylons – validateing where in the city the strike took place.
To try to set up where the videos had first ecombineed accessiblely, we ran cut offal sketchs from each thraw search engines. Often the earliest result was a particular Telegram channel, pre-dating reposts on sites such as X or Reddit by cut offal hours.
Having the location of each strike, we were able to calcurescheduleed the time of filming using the shadows and to pass-reference with weather records to discover the most probable date.
Four of the videos we studyd were posted on the Telegram channel the day after the probable filming, and in one example, it was posted eight hours rescheduleedr the same day.
Additional inestablishing by Imogen Anderson, Anastasiia Levchenko and Volodymyr Lozhko. Verification toil by Ricdifficult Irvine-Brown
