Ukraine’s president has shared a Russian drone attack video from southern Ukraine that appears to show a civilian being chased through a city street, calling it proof of a so-called “human safari” attack on noncombatants in the Kherson region. The footage, posted online by President Volodymyr Zelensky, shows a drone pursuing a street vendor as he tries to get away, ducking behind a white van before the device strikes and explodes.
Zelensky said the world needed to see the footage and described it as evidence that Russian forces were carrying out deliberate violence against civilians. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, went further, calling the incident a barbaric war crime and saying the practice was not random but part of a systematic Russian strategy. The video quickly became part of a broader argument from Kyiv that drone strikes in front-line areas are being used not just in battle, but to frighten and wound ordinary residents.
The man in the video was later identified by the Kherson regional governor as Yuriy, a 52-year-old vegetable vendor who was shown speaking from a hospital bed after the attack. He said he and his wife had been setting out crates of vegetables near his van when he heard a buzzing overhead. According to Yuriy, when his wife ran away, the drone turned toward him. He said he held up garlic toward the camera to show he was not trying to film it, and that the drone moved under an umbrella as he tried to escape.
Yuriy’s doctor said he suffered concussion, trauma, and multiple shrapnel injuries. His van was destroyed. The episode added a human face to a tactic that has become increasingly associated with the war in Kherson, a region that lies only a few miles from the front line and has seen repeated drone incidents.
