Russian Drone Chases Kherson Vendor in 'Safari' Attack
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Zelensky shared the video on Telegram of a Russian drone hunting a 52-year-old man in southern Ukraine's Kherson region, writing: "The world must see every piece of evidence that Russia has gone mad."
- The drone chased Yuriy, a street vegetable vendor, around his white van before swooping down and exploding on impact; a doctor said he escaped with multiple shrapnel wounds, concussion, and trauma.
- Yuriy said the drone turned toward him after his wife ran away, and he held up heads of garlic to show the operator he was a civilian — the drone "even ducked under the umbrella" while pursuing him around the van.
- Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the footage a "barbaric war crime" and described "safari" attacks as a "deliberate and systemic Russian strategy" of intimidation, saying the operator "knows full well that he is targeting a civilian."
- BBC Verify geolocated the video to a market beside a roundabout in the Tavriiskyi district of northern Kherson; the earliest public copy it found was posted by a pro-Ukrainian Instagram account on Tuesday morning.
- A 2025 UN report found Russian armed forces "recurrently killed and injured civilians" in the area using drones and said posting footage of such strikes amounts to the war crime of "outrages upon personal dignity"; Russia denies targeting civilians.
Why it matters: The vendor's firsthand account — that the drone operator could see his tomatoes and cucumbers and still chose to chase him — gives Kyiv documented evidence to press its case that Russia is systematically hunting front-line civilians, not collateral damaging them. The UN's classification of kill-video posting itself as a war crime gives Ukraine a legal hook beyond rhetoric, while the geolocated footage makes denial harder for Moscow.
