Hunting down Kherson residents: who is killing civilians?

Every day in Kherson and the oblast, Russian troops carry out ‘civilian hunting’. They track people with FPV drones, drop explosives, and then cynically write ‘Strike!’ on their Telegram channels. Since February 2022, Russians have killed 121 civilians in the Kherson region through drone attacks. The targets are the Beryslav, Kherson, and Kakhovka districts. Journalists from Slidstvo.Info obtained this information in response to a request from the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

Slidstvo.Info journalists reported on the victims in Kherson and showed Russians committing crimes against civilians.

BUILDERS ON THE ROOF OF THE MORGUE UNDER THE SIGHT OF A RUSSIAN FPV DRONE

Yevhen, a builder from Kherson, stares at his phone screen. A journalist from Slidstvo.Info shows him a video from a Russian Telegram channel: five men in work clothes are repairing a roof when, suddenly, a drone appears. There is an explosion, and people are thrown off the roof in different directions.

‘Yes, that’s our construction crew… Here I am standing. And here I am falling. We were repairing the morgue. The day before, a drone flew in, and we had to repair the pediment (part of the building’s facade, — ed.). I just looked up — and that was it. A second. It hit. I didn’t even have time to react… First, there was concussion, deafness, as if I had been submerged in water. Five of our people were injured then,’ recalls builder Yevhen.

The Russians posted this video in one of their public groups with the caption: ‘Kherson. Red zone. Who said roosters don’t build nests on roofs? Two 200’.

Yevhen just shrugs: ‘Some kind of inhuman actions… They see it on the screen — that you’re a civilian, unarmed. And they still hit you’.

The Kherson hospital closest to the coastal zone is now overflowing with civilians, from young children to the elderly. Most were injured by explosives deliberately dropped by Russian drones.

In one of the wards is Oleksandr, a Red Cross volunteer who had his leg amputated. He says he was riding his bike to check on his house and animals: ‘I turned onto another street, and a drone suddenly took off. It started chasing me from about twenty metres away. I threw my bike down, hid under a fence, and at that moment there was an explosion. I came to my senses a few seconds later. My first thought was to get a tourniquet and bandage my legs’.

In the neighbouring ward is Anatolii, whose story is similar: ‘I left the house and heard a buzzing sound. I hid under a tree, but it was hovering right above me. It dropped it (explosives — transl.). My leg was hanging by a thread… I picked it up and crawled under a bench’.

Sources in the special services provided Slidstvo.Info with video footage intercepted from Russian drones. These images show online attacks on civilian targets: a thermal power plant, Khersongaz, cars, and even a bus carrying children at the moment of impact.

KILLING KHERSON RESIDENTS — ‘PART OF THE SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION’

The Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office is conducting more than 30,000 criminal proceedings against Russians for war crimes. Of these, 1,650 involve drone attacks on local residents and civilian infrastructure.

One Russian soldier, Stepan Suminin, a corporal in the 10th Special Forces Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, has already been served with notice of suspicion in absentia. In May 2023, Suminin dropped explosives from a drone on a civilian man and woman walking down the street. This happened in the village of Odradokamyanka in the Kherson region. The man was seriously injured.

‘I’m still walking around with a piece of iron in my leg. If my wife hadn’t been there at the time of the attack, I wouldn’t have made it. It was hard psychologically after what happened; my wife couldn’t sleep for three nights. In the end, we moved to Kryvyi Rih. I enlisted to take revenge on the Russians for all the grief they have brought to our land,’ says survivor Serhii.

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Serhii wants the maximum punishment for the suspect, Stepan Suminin — the death penalty. Suminin is charged with violating the laws and customs of war. Journalists from Slidstvo.Info called Stepan under a false pretence.

Journalist: We would like to invite you, Stepan, to conduct a master class for Yunarmiya members (participants in the youth military-patriotic organisation Yunarmiya, which instils loyalty to the Russian army in teenagers and prepares them for participation in military operations — ed.).

Stepan Suminin: I’m busy at work right now. I’ll be on holiday in May.

Journalist: Could you share some information about your work in the Kherson region? Have you been there?

Stepan Suminin: I have been there. I have recordings from FPV drones of me working on various objects. But this is not material for teenagers. And it is not at all a topic that should be discussed in the context of patriotic education. Do parents give permission to watch people being killed?

Journalist: But this is part of a ‘special military operation’ (SMO), isn’t it?

Stepan Suminin: Perhaps it is part of an SMO.

Journalists from Slidstvo.Info called Suminin again without introducing themselves. But he did not answer the phone.

More than a thousand civilians, including 15 children, were injured by explosives dropped from FPV drones. The largest number of victims were in the Kherson region, according to the prosecutor’s office.

‘As a result of drone attacks, we treat between 80 and 120 people a month. The average number of people we have treated is over 600. Even in our hospital, there are three employees who died as a result of a drone strike. People were walking home after work,’ says Andrii Fedotov, general director of the hospital in Kherson.

TERROR LIVE: IDENTIFICATION

One of the Telegram channels where videos of drone attacks against civilians in the Kherson region can often be seen is FOBOS \ UAV. The account description states that this is the official channel of the eponymous group of the 18th separate motorised rifle brigade of the Dnipro military group of the Russian Federation.

Journalists from Slidstvo.Info have established from closed databases that the administrator of this channel is Anastasiia Tkach from occupied Sevastopol. From her VKontakte page, it is clear that she is a volunteer. In addition to volunteering, Tkach is also a soldier in the Russian army.

On her Telegram channel, ‘Diary of a Female Soldier,’ she writes: ‘My name is Anastasiia, call sign ‘Groza’. A year ago, I decided to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence. My blog will be about a female FPV operator. Our unit’s group. Starting today, daily content on the destruction of pig infrastructure and the pigs themselves’.

Anastasiia, call sign ‘Groza,’ who controls an FPV drone and is the administrator of a Telegram group for one of the Russian army’s units, is likely one of those killing Ukrainian civilians on the right bank of the Kherson region.

On 4 April, Russians dropped explosives on an evacuation group from an FPV drone, but no one was injured. A week earlier, journalists from Slidstvo.Info travelled to the same evacuation site with volunteer Andrii. Now they have found out which Russians could have been involved in the attack on him.

The journalists’ attention was drawn to the Telegram channel ‘HABR_BPLA’, which is probably run by fighters from the eponymous group of the 18th separate motorised rifle brigade of the Russian Federation’s ‘Dnipro’ military group. This channel regularly and first publishes footage of FPV drones attacking civilians on the right bank of the Kherson region. Andrii’s car was probably targeted by fighters from the 18th Brigade of the Russian Federation’s army.

A post about the attack on the volunteer was published on this Telegram channel on the day of the attack, and a day later, footage from Russian drones appeared on the same channel with the caption: ‘A soldier is behind the wheel. The car is armoured and equipped with electronic warfare equipment. These are real civilians (not actors), but there is one “but”. They are brazenly driving through territory controlled by Russian troops’.

After the attack, the volunteer is undergoing rehabilitation. He spoke to journalists by phone.

‘The Russians are triumphant, they are rejoicing. But why are they rejoicing? Ordinary people were driving to evacuate. They themselves say: “Leave the red zone”. But how can you leave if they are hunting cars and people from the red zone? I have nothing but hatred for these creatures,’ says volunteer Andrii.

Volunteer Andrii

The Russians have divided Kherson and the oblast into so-called ‘red zones’, as they write in their Telegram channels under videos of attacks on civilians. According to the occupiers, they have complete control over everything that moves in the territory they have designated as ‘red’ (the coastal zone, — ed.) — it makes no difference to them whether it is a car or a cyclist, elderly people or children, civilians or military personnel.

‘According to statistics, there are cases of women, children, people riding bicycles and local transport being hit — this indicates the intention of the person operating the drone to destroy the civilian population. I would call this terrorism directed specifically at the civilian population with the aim of destroying and making life impossible in the Kherson region,’ says Oleksii Butenko, head of the department for combating crimes committed in armed conflict at the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

Oleksii Butenko, head of the department for combating crimes committed in the context of armed conflict at the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office

Since February 2022, Russians have killed 121 civilians in the Kherson region through drone attacks. The targets are the Beryslav, Kherson and Kakhovka districts. This information was obtained by journalists from Slidstvo.Info in response to a request from the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

The Russians talk about peace negotiations, and Vladimir Putin calls Kherson and the oblast part of Russia — because that is what is written in their constitution. But in reality, they have turned the city and surrounding areas into a testing ground for FPV drone attacks on civilians.

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