Mykhailo Kovalsky, chief surgeon at the Kherson Regional Oncology Center, was waiting for a bus at 7:30 one late November morning when he spotted a drone in the sky, moving at high speed.
“People intuitively ran to the bus stop for cover,” recalls the silver-haired doctor. But as the metallic structure became crowded, he felt that it would be targeted. He tried to dart out before the drone dropped its grenade.
But the attack was all over in seconds. Grenade shrapnel hit his calf and wounded other commuters. Still limping months later, he is certain the drone pilot deliberately targeted civilians, given the target choice and timing.
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As the stalemate in Kherson drags on, the Russian military has turned to a grim strategy: targeting the civilian population in drone attacks. But even as their city becomes a shooting gallery, many local Ukrainians are refusing to leave.
Kherson is one of four regions that Russia is trying to annex in its war on Ukraine. The Dnieper River marks the front line, with Russian forces on its southern bank and Ukrainian forces holding Kherson city to the north.
The city of Kherson, the region’s capital, is becoming a ghost town. The main roads are empty. The shelves at the largest local supermarket still boast produce, but its doors and windows are boarded up. The number of dogged citizens who still have jobs and go to work, like Dr. Kovalsky, has shrunk significantly, as people flee to safety in other areas.
“The way I see it – the Russians realize by now that they won’t take Kherson militarily, so their strategic goal is to terrorize the civilian people until they reach breaking point and say, ‘Take whatever you want,’” he says. “That only makes us more stubborn and determined to overcome them.”
“They are sending swarms of drones”
Russian troops occupied the city of Kherson in March 2022 and held it for 10 months before Ukrainian forces drove them out. Since then, Russia has continues to strike the city with missiles, drone attacks, and ground-shaking glide bombs, killing people and destroying infrastructure.
Ukrainian forces hold defensive positions across the region. Units of drone hunters try to shoot down or jam the signals of enemy drones.
Many Ukrainians in Kherson feel they have no alternative, logistically and financially, than to consider moving. That is how Olena Sokrut, an unemployed factory worker, feels. She and her husband, Pavlo, survived a drone attack just as they were returning home from the market on March 7. She was unscathed; he is waiting for foot surgery.
“I am terrified that the Russians will return and kill everyone,” says Ms. Sokrut. “They openly declare they are tracking civilians, and their tactics are evolving. Now they are sending swarms of drones.”
Olha Nikitenko’s kitchen windows look out over the river. She tends to her back garden in frantic spurts, eyes and ears monitoring the sky. Her fear is born of experience: She barely survived a drone attack that targeted her and a couple of cyclists at a crossroads in March. Her neighbor was killed the next day.
“The drones are everywhere,” says Ms. Nihitenko, who avoids leaving home and keeps the lights off at night. “They buzz around like flies, 24/7. You can hear the pop of grenades constantly. At night, you try to show no sign of life because they have thermal vision.”
Russia targeting “red zones”
In April, the Monitor conducted interviews with eight survivors of drone attacks in Kherson. They described near-miss explosions while traveling by bus, car, or bicycle, or on foot, and said they feel hunted. The figures and footage shared on Russian-linked Telegram channels give credence to that claim.
So do the conclusions of new reports by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine and Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Russian armed forces have committed murder of civilians as crimes against humanity using drones,” the commission found.
Drone operators, the commission pointed out, rely on video feeds transmitted in real time by the cameras embedded in the drones to focus on targets that are obviously civilian, and then drop explosives on them. Such feeds have been disseminated by the hundred on Russian Telegram channels.
HRW says such footage first appeared in June 2024 on Telegram channels apparently linked to specific units of the Russian military. The channels circulated maps of the city designating certain districts as “red zones” where civilians or moving vehicles would be considered targets.
HRW cross-checked witness testimony with drone footage, and and corroborated it.
“With these attacks, because you have the live feed, because you have a high resolution camera, it is possible to categorically say that these were deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects,” says Belkis Wille, associate director in the Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division at HRW.
In 2024, drone and uncrewed aerial vehicle attacks killed 76 people and wounded 807 others. This year, such attacks have so far left 58 dead and 564 wounded, including eight children, according to Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, spokesperson for the Kherson Regional Military Administration.
Before the 2022 invasion, the suburb of Antonivka was home to 12,900 people. That number dropped to 4,500 in the summer of 2024 when the drone attacks began. Now only about 1,000 residents remain, according to local representative Serhii Ivaschenko.
“It is clear as day to us that the enemy wants to kill all of us – or take all our country,” he says. “All we can do is protect ourselves. We won’t give up. We will do what we can for as long as we can to keep this city in Ukraine.”
The evolving drone threat
Drones, whose technology is developing rapidly, are becoming the dominant form of warfare and a major cause of civilian casualties across Ukraine. “More people die from drone attacks than artillery or glide bombs,” says Mr. Ivaschenko.
Small, commercially available Mavic drones were the first to be used in Kherson by the Russians, carrying up to 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives. First-person view drones followed later, with 2-kilogram payloads.
The latest to emerge are fiber-optic cable drones, which are controlled via fiber-optic tethers rather than via radio transmission, rendering them immune to electronic warfare and jamming technologies.
Still recovering in hospital from injuries he suffered during a March 2 drone attack on a bus, 19-year-old Boris Medvedev dreams of a civilian future. He studies baking and works at a minimarket, where he enjoys chatting with clients. Despite the dangers, the good- natured teen insists that his family and his job are good reasons to stay. But he has no illusions.
Even “If Russia stops and the war ends, Kherson will have a hard time,” he says, one sunny April morning punctuated by multiple glide bomb explosions and over 50 drone alerts. “There is a long road to rebuild the infrastructure and community. It won’t happen overnight.
“But if the war doesn’t stop,” he predicts, “there is no future for Kherson.”
Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.
