Russian military drones twice attacked a vehicle carrying a United Nations leader and eight other U.N. aid workers on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The vehicle was transporting “the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs” (OCHA) during a humanitarian mission in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
A U.N. spokesperson told Newsweek that Tom Fletcher, the United Nations’ under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was in New York on Thursday, not Ukraine.
“The Russians could not help but know which vehicle they were attacking,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Fortunately, no one was injured. The mission representatives were evacuated.”
Aid workers are protected by international humanitarian law, and deliberately targeting them could be a violation “and might amount to a war crime,” the United Nations said following an October 2025 attack on U.N.-marked trucks.
Newsweek contacted the OCHA and the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment via email.
Previous Russian Strike on UN Vehicles
In October, four humanitarian trucks “clearly marked” as belonging to the U.N. came under attack by Russian forces while delivering aid to Bilozerka in the Kherson region, the agency said at the time.
“When the aid workers were on site, intensive artillery fire started, and later, during offloading, two clearly marked trucks of the World Food Program were targeted by first-person-view drones. Fortunately, the humanitarian workers were not injured, but two trucks were damaged and set on fire,” the U.N. wrote.
“Such attacks are utterly unacceptable,” the agency said of the October incident, noting a rise in drone attacks in the area.
At least five people were killed and 70 injured in a night of Russian attacks on Ukraine, including in the capital Kyiv and the Kharkiv and Odesa regions, Zelensky said. The overnight attacks followed heavy daylight missiles and drone strikes across Ukraine on Wednesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a scaled-back Victory Day parade in Moscow on Sunday that the war in Ukraine was “coming to an end,” fueling hope after more than four years of continuous war. One Russia expert told Newsweek that Putin’s and that he had not budged from his ultimate war goals.
The Latest on Russia-Ukraine War
Ukrainian forces have been carrying out frontline strikes against Russian military assets in occupied Kherson, where the strike on the U.N. worker’s vehicle allegedly took place, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s latest assessment on Wednesday. Both Russia and Ukraine have deployed large-scale drone strikes in the war, the Washington, D.C., think tank said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, so far without success.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that “nothing is happening” in negotiations, despite recent Russian discussions with U.S. officials.
Ukraine Map Shows Frontline With Russian Forces