A tragic event occurred in Kherson, becoming a shocking example of how modern warfare technologies are used against the civilian population. An ordinary resident of the Mykolaiv region, who had come to the neighboring regional center to earn a living, became the victim of a targeted attack by an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Morning Market and Sudden Attack
It all started on the morning of August 4. 52-year-old Yuri arrived in Kherson with his wife to sell the vegetables they had grown. The family had just started laying out their goods when a Russian drone appeared overhead. According to Alexander Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, the woman managed to run away, but a real hunt began for her husband.
The regional head described the situation as a demonstration of absolute impunity and cruelty: "For about a minute, the UAV circled around the car, chasing the man trying to save himself". The drone operator, from a distance, clearly saw his target — an ordinary person engaged in peaceful work.
"Look, these are vegetables!"
The victim, Yuri, later recounted the horror he experienced. He did not see the drone itself due to the bushes, but he heard the characteristic buzzing. When the unmanned aircraft began flying over his car, the man tried to explain to the operator that he was not a fighter, but a vendor.
"I showed him: look, these are vegetables! Eggplants, zucchini... But he started attacking me, I ran. Then the drone hit the car," Yuri recalls. His attempts to draw attention to his civilian activities failed. Instead of a dialogue, there was a strike.
Consequences of the Attack
When the drone dropped its warhead, Yuri fell from the explosion. The man suffered a concussion, blast trauma, and multiple shrapnel wounds. It is a miracle that he survived. His car, which had already been damaged during a trip to his mother-in-law's, sustained serious damage for the second time.
The incident in Kherson caused a resonance not only at the local level. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted sharply to the video demonstrating the so-called "drone safari" on civilians. The event became further proof that in the conditions of modern war, the boundary between the front and the rear is blurring, and any attempt to run a normal business can cost a life.
