Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has released video footage showing a Russian drone pursuing a civilian in the southern Kherson region, describing the incident as a “human safari” attack.
The footage shows a street vendor attempting to escape after noticing a drone hovering overhead. As the man runs around a white van, the drone continues to follow him before diving toward him and exploding.
According to local authorities, the 52-year-old vendor, identified only as Yuriy, survived the attack. Doctors said he suffered multiple shrapnel wounds, concussion and psychological trauma.
Sharing the footage on Telegram, Zelensky accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians.
“The world must see this,” he wrote.
“It must see every piece of evidence that Russia has gone mad, and every fact that Russian soldiers are enjoying killings and tormenting people.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the incident as a “barbaric war crime”. He said the attacks formed part of what Ukraine calls a deliberate campaign of intimidation against civilians living near the front line.
The Kherson regional governor later published footage from the hospital where Yuriy recounted the attack. He said he and his wife had just begun arranging vegetables for sale when they heard the drone’s sound.
“My wife ran away, and it came after me,” he said.”I even held up garlic toward the drone so the operator could see I wasn’t filming. It could clearly see my tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants.”
According to Yuriy, the drone continued following him around the vehicle before striking.
BBC Verify said it geolocated the footage to a market area near a roundabout in the Tavriiskyi district of northern Kherson. The organisation said it could not determine who recorded the footage, although the earliest publicly available version appeared on a pro-Ukrainian Instagram account.
So-called “human safari” drone attacks have repeatedly been reported in Kherson since Russian forces withdrew from the city.
A 2025 United Nations report documented repeated incidents in which drones were allegedly used to target civilians in the region. The report also criticised the online publication of drone footage showing attacks on civilians. Further stating that distributing such videos could amount to the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity.
Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, continues to deny deliberately targeting civilians.
