FT: Russia trains drone operators to attack civilians in Kherson

Author:
Oleksandra Opanasenko
Date:

Since mid-July 2024, when Russia intensified its shelling of Kherson, the city and its surroundings have been attacked by drones more than 9 500 times. The strikes killed at least 37 people and injured hundreds more.

The Financial Times (FT) writes about it.

The Russian military has turned Kherson into a training ground for drone operators, according to the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration (RMA) Oleksandr Prokudin. According to him, Russia transferred part of the best units of unmanned aerial vehicle operators to Kherson. From the other bank of the Dnipro River, opposite the city center, the Russians are launching advanced models of drones — this is how they hone combat techniques and train new drone operators.

Russian military and pro-war Telegram channels publish dozens of videos of drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians. As investigators of the Eyes on Russia project of the UK Center for Information Resilience (CIR) found, the "vast majority" of drone attacks by the Russians were directed against either moving or stationary vehicles — targets that are difficult to reproduce in a test environment.

The most drone attacks were recorded in September (2 748), writes FT. At the same time, the largest number of people were injured — 155. The most deaths due to drone attacks, according to FT, was in October — 12 people.

Most often, the Russians targeted military vehicles, ambulances, police and fire trucks, and humanitarian convoys with drones. Crowded markets, gas stations, cafes, post offices and humanitarian aid centers also came under fire.

For shelling of Kherson, the Russians use FPV drones, Chinese Mavic, and sometimes larger Russian Lancet UAVs.

Due to drone attacks, civilians began to leave the Kherson region more actively. Before the full-scale invasion, there were about a million people living in the region, but now there are 158 000. In Kherson, where 250 thousand people lived until February 2022, only 60 thousand remained.

"They are hunting us. Imagine the psychological impact this has on a person," says the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration Oleksandr Prokudin.

The Russians hit Kherson with drones so often that some locals carry small detectors that alert them when drones fly nearby. And some people go out only at night, so the probability that they will be spotted from the sky decreases.

The pressure on the civilians of Kherson may be part of Moscowʼs plan to force the Dnipro River and seize the right-bank part of the city, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine returned to their control in the fall of 2022, FT writes. The head of RMA Prokudin says the Russians have assembled 300 boats to cross the river and want to launch another offensive.

  • Russian occupiers captured Kherson and almost the entire Kherson region at the beginning of a full-scale invasion. In November 2022, the Defense Forces of Ukraine liberated the right-bank part of the Kherson region, together with the regional center, from the Russian occupiers. After that, the Russians began systematically shelling Kherson and other liberated settlements in the region.

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