When a pro-Russian Telegram channel released footage of a kamikaze drone blowing-up a bus taking Ukrainian commuters home after work in central Kherson, the channel’s administrator was so enthused with the imminent carnage that he added a voiceover as the drone swooped into kill.
‘Today will be wonderful,” the voice gloated as the drone dived on January 6. Later, in a second post, the same channel reconsidered its boast, claiming falsely that the two civilian passengers who lost their lives in the attack and the six wounded were in fact soldiers transporting ammunition.
“Exactly how was I supposed to be carrying ammunition — in my handbag?” asked Iryna Lyba, 30, one of the 15 commuters aboard the bus that afternoon, who scrambled through wreckage, covered in blood from the casualties around her, shrapnel in her foot.
“The Russians know exactly who they target in the city,” Lyba added. “They see us, they watch us, they kill us, then boast about it on Telegram, knowing we are civilians.”
Iryna Lyba was injured when an FPV drone was aimed at a bus she was travelling on
JACK HILL FOR THE TIMES
The Telegram boasts may one day backfire. Scores of video clips recorded by Russian first person view (FPV) strike drone operators and later released on pro-Russian Telegram channels, charting the weekly drone attacks against civilians in Kherson, are now being examined by war crimes investigators as evidence trails linking specific Russian units to the deliberate killing and wounding of non-combatants, a violation of international humanitarian law.
The Russian practice of hunting Ukrainian civilians with FPV drones in Kherson has become so regular and deliberate that it has earned the sobriquet “drone safari”.
Latest statistics released in January showed over the last five months of 2024, 12,000 Russian drones were recorded coming across the River Dnieper into the Kherson region, resulting in 64 dead civilians and 609 wounded. The drone attacks have intensified since the new year.
A civilian runs for cover as a drone goes overhead
JACK HILL FOR THE TIMES
The pattern, scale and deliberate nature of these strikes, using FPV drones that allow the drone operator a clear vision of the target — as well as a video record of each flight — constitute war crimes, and are likely crimes against humanity.
Since the start of 2025, the local Ukrainian judicial body gathering evidence of war crimes, the Kherson regional prosecutor’s office, had registered 799 criminal proceedings involving the use of drones by Russian troops to strike homes, cars, buses, emergency responders and pedestrians.
The information has been shared with the Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office, which is in regular contact with the International Criminal Court. In parallel, last December witness testimonies, drone footage, and pro-Russian social media posts linking military units to specific strikes was shared with the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, tasked by the Human Rights Council to investigate war crimes in the country.
Kateriyna Drobinina who was injured after being targeted by a drone
JACK HILL FOR THE TIMES
Aside from the obvious pitfalls of charging Russian military personnel in absentia, and the extreme unlikelihood that the Trump administration will prioritise justice over the chance of a quick deal with Putin, compelling social media evidence of war crimes committed by drone operators may lead to further sanctions, if not prosecution.
First, the clarity of the drone footage proves beyond reasonable doubt that in Kherson, Russian drone operators are knowingly and repeatedly targeting civilians.
“There is an almost permanent presence of reconnaissance drones around Kherson, so the Russians are very aware of what they are seeing, in real time, in high definition, right down to the age of people they are observing and their pattern of life,” said the lead investigator behind two ground-breaking reports by the Centre of Information Resilience (CIR) — an open source investigative site dedicated to exposing human rights violations — into drone attacks on civilians in Kherson last year.
Vitaliy Khomukha, head of emergency surgery at the Kherson city clinical hospital, has seen the impact of drone attacks firsthand
JACK HILL FOR THE TIMES
Published as part of the CIR’s “Eyes on Russia” project, the reports examined not just the extent and extremity of the drone attacks, but also the direct link between pro-Russian Telegram channels such as “From Mariupol to the Carpathians” and “HABR Team” to specific Russian military units.
In addition, both of these channels referred to a designated “red zone” in Kherson, in which any vehicle or civilian infrastructure would be regarded as a military target: a clear violation of Article 51 of the Geneva Convention.
Last November, “HABR Team” alluded not only to a direct military involvement, but also to a possible role testing out new drone models on live targets, posting that all of its attention was “focussed on combat work, testing masterpieces of technical art in the FPV and UAV industry”.
Similarly, though being more circumspect in revealing their own military involvement, the administrator of the “From Mariupol to the Carpathians” Telegram channel, @AlexanderZov2022, the most profligate in posting exclusive footage of drone attacks in Kherson — including the January 6 attack on the Number three bus — also suggested a direct link to the Russian units whose videos he posted.
“There is nothing formally tying him to a unit, but highly likely that he is part of a unit,” added the Eyes on Russia investigator, speaking on the condition that their name was withheld for security reasons. “These videos he posts are exclusive. They are not appearing anywhere else at all.”
In some cases, Russian Telegram posts have already resulted in punitive action, if not prosecution.
Last June, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Aero-Hit, a Russian company manufacturing the “Veles” drone, stating “Veles drones have been used by Russian forces based in Kherson against Ukrainian targets”. Just eight months earlier Vladimir Saldo, the collaborationist governor of the Russian-held part of Kherson region, had posted on Telegram that a Russian unit he backed, BARS-33, was testing the new “Veles” drone in combat.
Whatever the outcome of war crimes investigations, or the greater unknowns for Ukraine posed by the new US administration and its interaction with Putin, many civilian survivors of drone attacks in Kherson feel that the machines flying above them have already left an indelible mark.
“Even if the war ended I don’t know how I would feel about going back to work on a number three bus,” said Lyba, the survivor of the January 6 attack, “remembering that the two seats in front of me were usually occupied by passengers who died in a drone strike.