Russia Aims Drone Attacks at Civilians, a War Crime, U.N. Inquiry Says

A U.N. human rights commission has documented hundreds of instances of Russian drone pilots targeting civilians in the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, and concluded that they amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes.

For more than a year, Russian operators have routinely flown drones into Kherson and dropped hand grenades on civilians on sidewalks or working in backyard gardens, according to a report released on Monday by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. Other attacks hit ambulances and fire brigades, with drones sometimes hovering over burning buildings, waiting to drop grenades on arriving firemen.

What appear, in isolation, to be random acts of cruelty, according to the commission’s report, were actually an intentional pattern of attacks, intended to create “a permanent climate of terror” and force residents out of Kherson. Ukrainians call such hunting of civilians a “drone safari.”

“These attacks were committed as part of a coordinated policy to drive out civilians from those territories and amount to the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population,” the report concluded.

Russia has denied targeting civilians but declined to cooperate with investigators who had also sought to investigate Ukrainian strikes in Russian-occupied territory on the other side of the frontline.

As drones have come to play a larger role in warfare, so too have they come to play a larger role in war crimes, the report showed.

Russian military units often release videos of drone-eye views of civilians being killed, to be posted online by the units or groups affiliated with the Russian army, apparently as a means of amplifying the threat.

“The city will be dismantled — brick after brick,” one post by a military-affiliated group boasted in May, according to the report. “Stay tuned for updates,” it said.

The attacks the inquiry covered used small frontline drones, typically with a range of six miles, not the larger, longer-range drones that Russia routinely uses to bombard Ukrainian cities that are farther from the battlefield. Some frontline drones hover and drop grenades, while others fly into targets and explode. The attacks in Kherson are so frequent that the city has erected miles of net canopies over its streets to block drones.

Russian forces overran Kherson, on the west bank of the lower Dnipro River, in their initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Ukraine reclaimed the city in a counteroffensive later that year, but Russian forces kept control over the river’s east bank, within easy drone range. That section of the front line has barely shifted in the last three years.

A paradox of drone weapons lies in their use of remotely viewed video for targeting: They remove the operator from the battlefield, while at the same time providing an intimate view of the violence. It was a factor the U.N. investigators cited in alleging war crimes.

“All the types of short-range drones used in these attacks are equipped with live streaming cameras that focus on particular targets, leaving no doubt about the knowledge and intent of the perpetrators,” the report said.

Investigators documented similar tactics used by Russian drone forces across a wide swath of the front, showing that the attacks were directed “under a centralized command,” the report said.

It cited as one example an instance when a drone struck a medical first aid point, starting a fire. When a fire truck arrived to extinguish the blaze, another drone dropped a grenade on it.

The inquiry suggested the tactics were working, keeping residents of Kherson and other riverfront towns on edge, and persuading some to flee.

The report cited a woman living in one area where Russian drones buzz in often.

“It’s a lottery — will a drone fly in or not?” it quoted her as saying. “You go to bed and don’t know if you will be killed or wake up in the morning.”