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Posted on 08/08/2026 6:27:36 AM PDT by tlozo
Terrifying footage shows a Russian drone hunting a street vendor in Ukraine – as Moscow intensifies its drone and missile attacks against the country.
The nerve-wracking video, which has sparked allegations of war crimes from Ukrainian officials, shows a vegetable vendor being chased around his van stand by the low-flying craft before it explodes just as he dives behind his vehicle.
The vendor, a man in his 50s, survived the blast but suffered shock and shrapnel injuries, officials said. An explosion occurring between two vehicles, with the Ukrainian National Police emblem visible in the corner.A Russian drone taunted and hunted a street vendor in Ukraine – before exploding and injuring he man.
His wife was nearby during the attack, according to local police.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and Ukrainian police said the attack happened Tuesday in the southern region of Kherson — where a 1-year-old boy was executed by a Russian drone last year while playing in his grandmother’s yard.
The frequency of the drone attacks in Kherson has led civilians to describe their home as a “human safari zone,” where they are hunted from the sky by the deadly Russian devices. Sybiha accused Russia of committing war crimes.
“This barbaric Russian war crime in Kherson demands international condemnation and justice, but thousands of similar crimes never come to the public eye,” Sybiha said in a statement.
The minister blasted the drone pilot as a “sadist” and alleged he knew he was targeting a civilian.
Two children and an elderly woman were also killed in overnight Russian guided bomb strikes on Ukraine’s northern city of Sumy, local officials said, as Russia has stepped up its drone and missile strikes in Ukrainian territory.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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UN Commission concludes that Russian armed forces’ drone attacks against civilians in Kherson Province amount to crimes against humanity of murder
Russian armed forces have committed murder of civilians as crimes against humanity using drones, concludes the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine in a new report.
From July 2024, Russian forces have recurrently killed and injured civilians in an area stretching over more than 100 kilometres along the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Province. The drone attacks have been widespread, systematic and conducted as part of a coordinated state policy, the report said.
The attacks followed a regular pattern and the same modus operandi, demonstrating that they were planned, directed, and organized. There is no information suggesting that Russian military and civilian authorities have taken any steps to prevent or stop the commission of the crimes.
Nearly 150 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured as a result of the drone attacks in Kherson city and 16 localities in the Ukrainian-controlled areas, according to official sources. Victims were men, women, and children, mostly men. Civilians were targeted in various circumstances, as they stepped out to carry out their daily activities whether on foot or in any type of vehicle.
The drone operators used video feeds transmitted in real time by the cameras embedded in the drones, focused on targets that were visibly civilian, and dropped explosives on them. Hundreds of these video feeds have been regularly disseminated on Russian Telegram channels, some of them with thousands of subscribers, displaying the crimes, as well as text posts announcing further attacks.
The circumstances of the attacks, the videos, and the explicit threatening text posts demonstrate that Russian armed forces and those supporting them have committed acts or threats of violence for the primary purpose of spreading terror among the civilian population, in violation of international humanitarian law. Referring to Russian soldiers, a senior health professional of a hospital in Kherson said: "They are simply chasing and hunting civilians who are on their way to work or walking their dogs. They drop explosives from drones like it is a video game.”
The recurrent drone attacks, the widely disseminated videos showing them, and numerous posts explicitly exhorting the population to leave suggest a coordinated state policy, on the part of the Russian authorities, to force the population of Kherson Province to leave the area. The Commission therefore concludes that Russian armed forces may have committed the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population.
The Commission examined over 300 publicly available videos of attacks and over 600 text posts on Telegram channels and, where possible, identified victims of these attacks. It interviewed 91 persons from the areas affected by drone attacks, including victims, witnesses, local authorities and medical personnel.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/05/un-commission-concludes-russian-armed-forces-drone-attacks-against-civilians
Oleksandr gave a battle-hardened chuckle as he spoke about the constant threat of Russian drones over his hometown. But moments later, he was fighting back tears.
"This is our country. This is my home. I have tried…but I can't live without Kherson. That's how it is," he said.
The conversation was abruptly interrupted by gunfire, buzzing, and a shouted warning that a Russian Lightning drone was nearby. The RFE/RL Ukrainian Service team joined locals running across broken glass to a shelter.
Oleksandr is a resident of Kherson, a city that had some 280,000 inhabitants before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 but which now has a population of around 60,000. Swiftly occupied by Russian forces, it was liberated months later and has since been repeatedly attacked by shells and drones launched by Russian forces dug in on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River on the edge of the city.
'This Is My Home': Living Under Russian Drones In Kherson
Now, municipal teams work in bulletproof vests under the cover of mobile air defense units. When the all-clear sounded, a team got back to work boarding up blasted windows in a housing block with plywood.
"Every day you understand that people are taking risks, risking their lives," said Volodymyr Tsiktor, head of the municipal works department. "There was one recent case where a garbage truck was hit. It was pretty obvious that it wasn't a military vehicle, but a drone struck it. Thankfully, everything was OK. The people inside suffered only minor injuries." 'Human Safari'
Civilians in Kherson are frequently hunted by first-person-view drones, or FPVs, in attacks dubbed a "human safari." This week, video of a Russian drone stalking and attacking a 52-year-old man selling vegetables at a local market made global headlines. The man suffered concussion and shrapnel wounds, but local authorities say Russian FPV drone attacks killed 29 civilians in July alone.
Tsiktor said the tactic was "probably to drive people into despair, into panic…. It's terror to force the population to leave."
Across town, a mobile air defense unit was moving across Glory Park. Once a popular place for Kherson residents to relax, it's now a battlefield. Just a few hundred meters from the riverbank, the park is a frequent flight path for attacking Russian drones and is one of the most dangerous places in Kherson.
The air defense unit was manned by Ukrainian police officers who said they could not have previously imagined their work would one day involve shooting down drones.
"Whenever I come here and look across the river, that's where my home is. That's where I grew up. That's where I went to school. Now, all that's left are the memories," said one of the policemen, who cannot be named for security reasons.
Many of these men have relatives across the river in the Russian-occupied areas.
"I really want to see my parents, who stayed there and are suffering both emotionally and physically, when they beat my father up," said another officer.
https://www.rferl.org/amp/ukraine-kherson-russian-drones-human-safari/33822793.html
Expect Russians to be hunted by much better Ukrainian Drones now
If this is real (who knows with AI anymore?), this is a blatant war crime. The intentional targeting of a non-military structure with no military value and the targeting of a civilian non-combatant is bad enough. But the “playing with” the individual prior to killing them is also a war crime and displays some very dark moral depravity that is akin to demonic behavior. I killed a lot of Taliban and al Qaeda, but I killed them quickly and efficiently. Never toying around with them. That’s sickening.
Drone warfare is a disgusting new reality.
Remington 870 would cure that.
One has to look at it from the Putin point of view.
“If you are Ukrainian and you have not surrendered the land around you or you don’t support the Russian SMO, you are fair target. Resistance to the SMO is a deadly decision.”
Signed...
- - - Putin
Video (Post 4) of mobile police anti drone unit shows one of them using a shotgun.
Ukraine has also developed an anti-drone round (.223) for its M16A4 with a range of about 50 meters.
How does a drone “taunt” someone?
Is there a loudspeaker?
So, how many Russians have you met?
Drones are everywhere these days - military, government agencies, universities, schools, children.
How do they determine the source of a particular one, such as the subject here??
Don’t know about when it is in the air but the video and the debris from the attack would be investigated and cataloged, and for a war crime it would be be given the full treatment and stored as evidence.
Think real hard about it. No loudspeaker necessary.
Regards,
(((PING!)))
To be added to the zeeper follies pinglist,
ping me bro... we need laughter!
————
I saw that video the other day but didn’t know if he survived. Glad to hear that he did. I used to be ambivalent about the war and didn’t really support either side. But as it becomes clear that Russia is engaged in a terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians, I now support the Ukrainian cause.
Yes, but I have a hard time seeing a government taking out a street vendor, whereas I can easily see someone acting for reprisal or revenge.
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