‘I would just cut him to pieces,’ says the mother of a 24-year-old woman from Nikopol who was killed by a Russian drone

Ruslana Morozova, a 24-year-old woman from Nikopol, died on 11 October in the middle of the weekend when a Russian drone struck a beer shop in a residential neighbourhood where she worked. Slidstvo.Info obtained an interception of this particular drone and identified the Russian commanders who gave orders to attack civilians in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Journalists also spoke with Ruslana’s mother and her boyfriend — they recalled the morning before the tragedy, the last messages, and what Ruslana was like in life.

This is reported in the investigation by Slidstvo.Info.

The Russian army advanced in the Dnipropetrovsk region in late August and early September, according to analysts at DeepStateMap. But shelling of the region has not stopped since the start of the full-scale invasion. Just four kilometres from the city of Nikopol, across the Dnipro River, lies the occupied left bank. The city is under daily attack: Russian troops are targeting residential areas and civilian infrastructure.

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Slidstvo.Info has obtained video footage from Russian drones attacking Nikopol. One of them shows the events of 11 October 2025. A drone from the occupied bank flew across the river, moving over private houses. In just three minutes, it completed its journey and crashed directly into a beer kiosk in a residential area. The local saleswoman, 24-year-old Ruslana Morozova, died. Police and relatives found her behind the counter, in a pool of her own blood.

‘THEY COULD NOT HAVE KILLED MY RUSLANA. IT SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED’

Ruslana, her parents and two younger sisters left Yenakiieve (a city in Donetsk Oblast, which has been under Russian occupation since 2014 — ed.) for Nikopol in 2014. The girl studied and worked there.

“We lived together for three years. We went out for a walk — a mutual friend introduced us. And it was… even hard to describe. She liked me, I liked her. It was all so natural. She was like a kindred spirit: a friend and everything else. And now — it’s like a piece of happiness has been taken away from you,” recalls Ruslana’s boyfriend Yehor.

On 11 October, Ruslana’s mother learned from monitoring Telegram channels about the attack on the area where her daughter worked. At around 10 a.m., she tried to call her, but Ruslana only sent a message saying that she was busy and would call back later.

Yehor says that on that morning, a few minutes before the tragedy, he and Ruslana were exchanging funny videos and pictures. Despite the threat of drone attacks, they were hardly worried — during the war, constant danger had become a normal part of their lives.

In the first minutes after 11 a.m., a Russian drone, whose interception was obtained by Slidstvo.Info from sources, takes off from the occupied left bank. It crosses the Dnipro River, flies over a private sector, a stadium, a road with a bus, and a four-storey building, then sharply turns left and descends. At this moment, contact with it is lost. An explosion.

A few minutes later, police are already working at the scene of the tragedy. Yehor’s mother arrives there — she clutches her head, repeating: ‘My daughter-in-law!’ At this time, Ruslana’s mother and her husband are on their way to the hospital, hoping to see their daughter alive there.

“I say, “They were supposed to bring a young woman, she’s 24 years old. Where is my child?” And the nurse replies, “No one was brought in. There’s no one here.” I rush around the hospital — screaming, crying, but my child is nowhere to be found. I think, okay, the ambulance was delayed on the way, and I prepare myself for that. Because of the threat of drones, they might not be able to leave. And then I go out onto the street. A friend calls from the scene of the tragedy. I ask her: where is the ambulance, where is Ruslana? And she says to me: “Lena, she was killed”. You understand… “killed” — that’s all. Well, my Ruslana couldn’t have been killed. There’s no way. This shouldn’t have happened,” says Ruslana’s mother, Olena.

Later, Yehor also arrived at the scene. He saw Ruslana on the counter in the shop — her arm was hanging down, and she had fatal wounds to her head and chest. According to the young man, the debris barely touched the neighbouring premises; the strike hit the exact spot where Ruslana was standing: it was as if the drone had targeted her.

“She’s there, you understand… lying there, poor thing. No tears, nothing. She didn’t even understand what had happened. When I approached her, I saw not even a wound — a hole in her head. It was covered by her hair, but you could see it. And so, I helped her, stayed with her, because I couldn’t just leave her there,” recalls Ruslana’s boyfriend.

The woman’s mother says that it’s as if part of her life has been torn away along with her daughter. She still can’t believe what happened: sometimes it seems that Ruslana will come home and say that it was all a joke. The woman admits that she feels as if she is living in a void, and that she is only living because she has two other daughters. Ruslana was her ‘bright angel’ and her closest soul. On 11 October, her mother says, the Russian strike killed her along with her daughter.

Ruslana Morozova with her mother Olena

“They ruined my whole life. I curse them — those bastards who launched those drones. May they be cursed to the last… I would like them to bring him to me and I would cut him to pieces. I would make him lie down and tear him to pieces. I would shut his mouth so he couldn’t scream, or pour wax into his mouth — and saw that bastard to pieces. They saw that these were shops, that there were people there; how could they hit those?” — says Ruslana’s mother.

WHO IS ATTACKING THE PEOPLE OF NIKOPOL

Russian drone operators are attacking civilian targets in Nikopol, critical infrastructure, police officers and rescue workers. Journalists from Slidstvo.Info managed to find out who is killing civilians.

In June 2025, the Russian Telegram channel Kalionyie Strely published a video of an attack on one of Nikopol’s high-rise buildings, claiming that Ukrainian military personnel were hiding there. In their description, they wrote that they were a ‘news channel of an airborne assault regiment,’ but without the regiment number or details about the military.

Later, another video appeared on this Telegram channel, in which the military ‘revealed’ details about themselves. On 28 September, footage of an ‘air battle’ was published, in which Russian FPV drones attack the Ukrainian UAV ‘Leleka-100’.

Journalists found the original video, which had been published earlier, on 1 August, on the Telegram channel of Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian propagandist, neo-Nazi and, concurrently, head of the Bars Sarmat Special Purpose Centre. The video description reads: ‘Fighters from the Special Purpose Centre for Unmanned Systems Bars Sarmat, together with the Pryanika air defence unit of the 345th Airborne Assault Brigade near Enerhodar (Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant), detected and shot down the Leleka-LR (Army of Drones) UAV.’

Thus, the Telegram channel Kalionyie Strely, which features footage of direct attacks on residential buildings, is linked to fighters from the 345th Airborne Assault Regiment of the Russian Army, which includes groups of UAV operators. It is these units that are likely responsible for the strikes on civilians in Nikopol; their bases are located across the river in the occupied towns of Kamianka-Dniprovska and Velyka Znamianka.

A trend can be seen in the footage of Russian drones intercepted by journalists from their sources. Most often, enemy drones hit the private sector near the shore, target the port, and fly across the city to communication towers. Sometimes the attacks resemble training exercises.

“Now, 15-20 per cent of drones have started to fly further, and therefore the ‘kill zone’” (the place where fire is concentrated, — ed.) has increased by three to four kilometres.

The Russian military is taking advantage of the proximity and attacking the civilian population,” says Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesman for the South Operational Command.

According to information from Slidstvo.Info sources in law enforcement agencies, Russians from the 345th Airborne Assault Regiment are involved in the attacks on Nikopol and Marganets.

According to sources, orders are given by commander Petro Popov (Попов Петр Петрович) and head of the unmanned aviation service Igor Zabolotsky (Заболоцкий Игорь Владимирович).

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, prosecutors in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast have recorded 523 incidents of shelling of Nikopol with FPV drones, resulting in 203 people wounded and 15 killed. In neighbouring Marganets, 133 attacks using FPV drones were recorded, with 74 people injured and 11 killed. As of now, there have been twice as many attacks and deaths as in the whole of last year. This data was obtained by journalists from Slidstvo.Info from the Dnipropetrovsk region prosecutor’s office.

Ruslana’s mother shows journalists a posthumous portrait of her daughter, which she made in Photoshop, and tells them what she dreamed her to be like in the future: “I always dreamed of seeing her in a wedding dress. Sometimes she would come to me and I would hug her: ‘Ruslana, do you know that you are my life?’ She would say, ‘I know.’ I would say, ‘Do you know that you are my soul?’ She would say, ‘I know.’ I always dreamed… When she got pregnant, I would protect her, I would be with her in the maternity ward. But look what they did….”

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