London: A man selling vegetables in a Ukrainian town survived an attack by a Russian drone after it chased him around his vehicle in a chilling strike captured on video and shared around the world.
The attack drew condemnation as an example of a “human safari” by Russian drone operators who watch for civilians and follow them with their airborne explosives in the manner of a computer game.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the attack as a crime and said the man under attack in the southern city of Kherson had been wounded in the blast.
“A Russian drone deliberately hunted down a man selling vegetables and detonated right next to him,” he said.
“Every single day, ordinary people in Kherson face these Russian ‘safaris’.”
Kherson, located across the Dnipro River from Russian forces, has seen hundreds of drone attacks on civilians over the past year, leading local authorities to install netting and other barriers to try to protect citizens.
Many of the city’s most important functions have been moved underground to escape the attacks, which became so commonplace that Ukrainians coined the term “human safari” for the Russian tactics.
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The drones are fitted with cameras to allow a “first-person view” by the Russian operator, who can look for a target, even if it is a civilian on a city street.
The horrific video highlighted the scale of this threat by showing how the vegetable seller tried to hide from the drone as it hovered around his van.
The man was identified as Yurii, 52, who came to Kherson from a nearby area to sell fresh produce, according to the Kyiv Independent and other Ukrainian media.
The video shows him trying to dodge the drone, which hovers around and over the van, before the device detonates near him. He was taken to hospital suffering from shrapnel wounds and concussion.
In a video released by the local military officials, Yurii said he was trying to show the drone operator that he was only selling vegetables. “But it started flying right at me,” he added. He said his wife was able to escape.
Drone operator is a ‘sadist’
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the attack a “barbaric” Russian war crime and said thousands of similar attacks never reached the public eye.
“This is a deliberate and systemic Russian strategy. They know exactly what they are doing. The sadist operating this drone knows full well that he is targeting a civilian,” he said.
Drones have increased in speed and range to the point where the danger zone for soldiers and civilians can extend for 25 kilometres on either side of the front line, according to Ukrainian military officials.
This “kill zone” is wide enough to include entire cities such as Kherson. When The New York Times reported on the “safaris” in January, local officials said about 200 civilians had been killed and 2000 wounded in the drone strikes over the past year.
In May, Ukrainian soldiers in Kherson told a reporter from London’s The Telegraph of the way they hacked into the feeds of the FPV drones to see the vision being relayed to a Russian operator, helping them identify the threats and destroy them.
“On a busy day, we might shoot down ten drones,” the operator of the drone detection equipment told the newspaper.
One Ukrainian aid worker recently told this masthead of a narrow escape from an FPV drone near a village outside Kharkiv, another city close to Russian forces.
“There was an FPV drone just flying after our car, and I was terrified,” said Anastasiia Bilchenko. “We could see, from our drone detector, that the eyes of the drone were following us.”
The Kherson attack came one day after the widespread circulation of a video showing a Ukrainian drone falling on a Russian beach at a Black Sea resort crowded with civilians. Russian officials said seven people died, including three children, and another 58 were injured.
The video showed the drone falling at Gelendzhik, east of Crimea, and exploding on the beach.
Russian authorities accused Ukraine of targeting civilians, while Ukrainian official Andriy Kovalenko said the drone had been shot down by Russian air defence personnel.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.