Listen, Run, Hide

Petro & Tetiana

Every morning at 7 a.m., Petro would drive his wife Tetiana to the roundabout at the edge of Kherson’s Antonivka suburb. Driving any further into Antonivka meant running a high risk of being targeted by Russian drones, so Tetiana would then walk another kilometer to the grocery store the couple owned, named ‘Natali’ in honor of their daughter, Nataliia. Every evening, Petro picked Tetiana up at the same place.

August 26 started like any other day. Petro called his daughter after taking Tetiana to work in their white Mercedes minivan, which Petro used to pick up food and goods for the store.

Later that day, Tetiana called Nataliia to say Petro was coming to pick her up, and that he had decided to pick her up closer to the store. This was unusual, but he wanted to save her from having to walk so far.

An hour later, Tetiana called her again. Nataliia heard, “Hello,” followed by an explosion, and then the line went dead.

A Russian operated drone had attacked Petro and Tetiana, and it had been captured on video. The video, uploaded to a Russian military-affiliated Telegram channel, shows the drone following the white minivan as Petro drives it towards the roundabout. The drone follows the minivan for a full minute, and as it enters the roundabout, the drone drops a munition on the roof of the vehicle. 

Nataliia rushed to the hospital in Dniprovskyi District, two kilometers from where her parents were attacked. “When I arrived, my mom was sitting there, covered in blood, holding one of my dad’s sneakers close to her heart,” she said. “I didn’t see my dad.”

A group of volunteers moving Petro’s damaged van two weeks after the drone attack that killed him. © 2025 Nataliia.

Soon after, the medical staff took Tetiana for an X-ray. The drone attack had fractured her arm.

A woman Nataliia knew, an anesthesiologist at the hospital who regularly shopped at the family store, approached her. She grasped Nataliia’s shoulder and told her, “Your dad is gone.”

Petro was alive when he arrived at the hospital. But the head injury caused by the drone attack was severe, and the hospital lacked a neurosurgeon capable of treating him.

“I saw my mom coming out of the X-ray [radiology] room,” Nataliia said. “They had been together for 32 years, and now I had to tell her that my dad was gone.”

The Bigger Picture

The attack that killed Petro is one of many Russian drone attacks on civilians in Kherson.

The Kherson City Council Executive Committee told Human Rights Watch that between May 1 and December 16, 2024, drone attacks in Kherson resulted in at least 483 civilian injuries and 30 fatalities.

The attacks continue to this day.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the city of Kherson was home to over 280,000 people. It was a vibrant and rapidly growing city with an economy centered around shipping and farming. People valued time in nature, and many families had summer houses close to where the reeds grow tall by the shores of the river and spent weekends by the Black Sea.

Today, fewer than 80,000 people remain.

Such warnings are unlawful because civilians remain fully protected from attack under international humanitarian law applicable in this conflict. Under international humanitarian law, attacking forces cannot designate areas “civilian-free zones”. Attacking forces must always take all feasible precautions to avoid loss of civilian life and property. This includes canceling an attack when it becomes apparent that the target is civilian.

Life with Drones

People living near the river have been forced to adapt to the constant threat of armed drones, changing the way they move around their neighborhood, go to work, or secure food, water, and medical care. In some areas, residents have been cut off from the city’s water supply and electricity for months because of incoming Russian drone attacks.

Volodymyr, 48, distributes aid in Kherson and has come under drone attack several times. He now listens for the sound of drones for fifteen minutes before leaving his house. On the road, he drives quickly through open areas, then slams on the brakes to pause under larger clusters of trees to listen again.

Neighbors watch out for one another, listening out of the windows from their homes for the ominous sound. Olha, 38, lives in Dniprovskyi District and told Human Rights Watch that she doesn’t drive out of her garage until her neighbor listens for drones, confirming to Olha that it’s safe to leave.

Valeriy and Anastasia from Antonivka had just survived a drone attack on their home when Human Rights Watch met them in November. Valeriy had bandages on his head, while Anastasia had one on her face. (The tip of her nose had been chopped off. She only survived the attack because her chihuahua puppy was tucked into her coat, in front of her heart, and a metal fragment that could have killed Anastasia killed her pet instead.)

To avoid the drones, Valeriy said, “we move around on moped or by car, but you need to go slowly, you need to listen, and if you hear nothing, then you make a run for it.”

Some people have also started using handheld drone detectors that inform them if a drone is nearby, the drone’s model, and how far away it is.

But it’s not only drones that residents must be alert to. “I am always looking up for drones, but I wasn’t looking down for mines.” said Serhii, who lives in Dniprovske, a town about eight kilometers west of Kherson. In November he stepped on an antipersonnel landmine, which nearly severed his left foot.

Since August, residents say, Russian drones have been dropping antipersonnel landmines in areas of the city near the river, including Dniprovskyi and Antonivka. Local authorities now display posters in affected areas, warning residents of the risks posed by both drones and landmines. According to residents, it can take weeks for overloaded authorities to clear and destroy antipersonnel landmines or other unexploded ordnance dropped by drones.

The Drones

Quadcopter drones appear to be used for combat functions to an unprecedented extent in this war. Attacks on civilians by Russian forces using these drones demonstrate their deadly accuracy.

Quadcopter drones are extremely agile with the ability to hover, fly horizontally or vertically, loop around corners, slip through open windows and doors, maneuver between narrow spaces, and follow people and moving vehicles.

Viktoria

Viktoria, a 40-year-old ambulance medical assistant, responded to an emergency call from two civilians injured by a drone attack on October 28. With the fog lights on, the ambulance driver pulled onto a pitch-black driveway near the riverbank in Antonivka.

Viktoria had a bad feeling.

It was difficult to hear drones over the sound of the vehicle’s engine, people shouting, and barking dogs. But she listened closely for that ominous buzzing. “Hurry,” a group of people with flashlights said, walking up to the ambulance. Her team got out – people needed their help.

The doctor, Serhiy Kucherenko, went to treat the injured people lying on the ground next to the ambulance. The ambulance driver went around the back to start unpacking the stretcher.

Then, she heard it – the buzzing of a drone. It was getting closer. “Drone! Drone!” she yelled to the doctor while looking for a place to hide, but it was too dark. People panicked.  

Viktoria ran towards the only place with light – the open side door of the ambulance. With one foot in the van, an explosion erupted to her right, precisely where the doctor had been standing moments before with the injured. Crawling into the van, she began to lose consciousness. The pain in her legs and torso was searing.

Human Rights Watch learned that not only did the Russian drone drop the munition, it filmed the moment of the attack on Viktoria and her colleagues. 

In a video uploaded to a Russian military-affiliated Telegram channel the day after the attack, the drone is flying in Antonivka, passing houses below, its thermal camera pointed straight ahead.

The outline of a person becomes visible through some trees, and the drone changes course towards the person. Pointing its camera down and calibrating its position, the drone hovers above the group of people surrounding Viktoria’s ambulance. A couple of dogs can be seen moving around, and one of the victims Viktoria hoped to help is seen lying on the ground. The drone then drops the munition. It explodes as it hits the ground between the vehicle and the people.

After the attack, the ambulance driver found Viktoria in the ambulance, injured, and the doctor just outside, also injured and lying in a pool of blood. Two bystanders helped the driver load the doctor and civilians into the ambulance. They drove towards the nearest hospital with punctured tires.

The doctor died before reaching the hospital. 

Viktoria suffered multiple injuries to both her legs, her hip, and her stomach.  

Human Rights Watch researchers met Viktoria and the driver in Kherson one month after the attack on their ambulance. 

Viktoria still used one crutch to move around. She’d made progress; it used to be two.

Parts of her legs were still bandaged. She suffered fragmentation injuries to her legs and feet. After two surgeries, the injuries will take time to heal.

Though it was uncertain, Viktoria was hopeful that she would make a full recovery. “When I’ve recovered, I would like to return to work,” she said. “I love working [as a medical assistant], but time will tell.”

Ambulance personnel told Human Rights Watch their teams could no longer respond to calls in some parts of Antonivka due to the fear of drone attacks. Instead, police teams in armored vehicles could respond and transport those injured to medical facilities. 

To Stay or Go

Russia’s drone campaign in Dniprovskyi and Antonivka has hindered people’s access to food, water, health care, including medical and rescue services, and other services such as public transportation. Telecommunication in the areas had already been severely limited as a result of Russian attacks.

More videos uploaded to Russian military-affiliated Telegram channels show the targeting of such services.  

Nataliia’s family store in Antonivka closed after the attack that killed Petro and has remained closed ever since. It was one of only two remaining grocery stores in the area. “Previously,” Nataliia said “there were four or five functioning grocery shops. Ours closed when dad was gone and the last one [in Antonivka] closed a month ago. And now there is nothing.”

Residents who remain in Antonivka and in areas near the riverbank in Dniprovskyi must now, at great personal risk, travel several kilometers to get water and food. But not everyone is physically fit enough or has the risk tolerance to make the trip. 

A volunteer organization distributes bread by van in Kherson. © 2025 World Aid Runners, Inc.

The Russian authorities have not stated the drone campaign’s objective in Kherson, but some residents told Human Rights Watch they believe its aim is to depopulate the area.

Regardless of the intent, this has been the clear effect.

The disruption of essential services, combined with the constant threat of drones above and landmines below, has forced many residents to move out of the riverbank areas. 

The number of people living in the Antonivka district nearly halved between May and December 2024, to 2,300 from 4,570 residents, authorities said. Another authority estimated that 65 to 80 percent of those who remain are older people.

Human Rights Watch spoke to several residents who have been forced to leave their homes. Angelica, whose husband was killed in a drone attack, had to leave her apartment in Antonivka in December after another drone attack on a vehicle outside her building shattered her apartment windows.

“It was impossible to live there,” she said. “There is no communication, no heating, and emergency services cannot reach you. So, I had to leave for civilization.”

Just two days before the attack that killed her father, Nataliia had pleaded with her parents to close the store. Petro loved his country, she recalls, and he loved Kherson. “He could have left [the country] with mom and gone abroad, his age allowed him to do so,” she said.

Yet, he told her, “‘This is mine; I can’t leave it.’”

Two weeks after the fatal attack, Nataliia went to retrieve Petro’s minivan, which still sat near the roundabout. She asked for help from volunteers working in the city; few were willing to take this risk.

Rain began pouring down as they moved the vehicle, its windshield still stained with her father’s blood.

“It felt like a sign from my dad,” Nataliia said, “protecting us from the drones.”

A Warning for the Future

The stories of Petro, Tetiana, Serhii, Viktoria, Olha, Volodymyr, Valeriy, Anastasia, and other residents of Kherson depict a unique campaign of terror. Additionally, Russia’s assault on Kherson since mid-2024 represents a seismic shift in the way that relatively inexpensive, commercially available drones, adapted to deliver explosive weapons, can be used in large numbers to target, hunt, kill, and injure civilians in large urban centers – making life so unbearable that those who are able feel that they must flee.

The implications of this kind of abusive military campaign, that can ruthlessly and accurately target civilians and civilian property, are far-reaching and global. To minimize harm to civilians and to help prevent these tactics from being repeated by abusive warring parties in other conflict zones around the world, commercial drone companies, states, and international bodies should work together to identify how to improve protection for civilians against the unlawful use of drones in warfare, including through prosecutions for use that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Read our full report here.

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