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Drones once primarily used for surveillance, have evolved into weapons for hunting human targets in Ukraine.
During June and July, the Russian military dramatically increased drone attacks on civilians in the Kherson region, with the last two weeks breaking all records. Estimates suggest 50 people have been killed or injured in the attacks.
In the port city of Kherson, drones patrol the skies, hovering over devastated coastal suburbs and villages, searching for an old lady with a bucket here or a teenager on a bicycle there—to eliminate by dropping explosives.
“We’ve got something new here,” said Olha, a grocery store owner in Kherson. “It’s called skid, literally ‘a drop’.”
Daily skid statistics are terrifying: on 24 July, a Russian drone dropped explosives on a woman in Romashkove village, hospitalising her with blast and cranial injuries and shrapnel wounds to her legs. The same day, a private house in Kherson’s suburbs caught fire after a skid attack. While firefighters were extinguishing the fire, a second drone attack damaged the fire truck with shrapnel. And in Kherson city, a drone attack on a 57-year-old woman, left her with a concussion, leg wound, and blast injuries.
The following day, two drones struck residents in the suburb of Kindiyka, injuring a couple and killing a 51-year-old man. In Antoniivka, another suburb, a drone attacked a vehicle carrying humanitarian aid, injuring the driver, and another, later that day, wounded a 72-year-old woman. A resident of Sadove village, also 72, suffered blast trauma, concussion, and shrapnel wounds to his forearm after a drone attack.
“Drones are like flies,” said Volodymyr, a resident of the coastal area. “They see you and they target you.”
“Drones are our curse,” said Tatiana, a resident of the Vostochny district, whose building was attacked on 28 July.
Hiding under a tree in front of her high rise, Tatiana pointed out broken windows and shattered doors. For two months, drones have been patrolling the skies over her home, dropping explosives on civilian cars and people.
Getting outside is extremely dangerous but staying inside can be unsafe, too. Tatiana’s neighbour, Elizaveta, survived a drone attack in her apartment.
“It’s a human safari,” Tatiana said.
Kherson Non-Fake, a popular local Telegram channel, reported that due to “attacks by enemy drones, some stores and even gas stations” are closed.
It said Russian Mavic drones “regularly fly at various altitudes” and while it searches for military targets, it’s often civilians that get killed.
“A drone with a grenade takes off from the left bank and flies for some time in search of anything resembling military targets. If the drone does not find such a target, it looks for any car or a group of civilians. After that, the target is attacked so as not to transport the grenade back to the left bank.”
Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, the head of the press service of the Kherson regional military administration and the spokesman of the Kherson region told Byline Times that previously, for several months, drones attacked mostly Beryslav district coastal zones.
They now target residents in most of the Kherson city coastal districts daily, he said, explaining that often the drones do a Russian signature “double tap”, striking first responders and ambulances arriving to help victims of artillery bombardments.
‘Skids’ are a war crime
“There were many instances when explosives were dropped on children. Two teenage girls, sisters, were injured last week,” said Tolokonnikov. “Earlier, the Russian military claimed that they only harm civilians by accident. They argued that civilians came under fire due to the lack of precision in the weapons targeting the Ukrainian military locations.
The drone operators see their targets. They see that old woman or a child. They know what they are doing
Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, Kherson military spokesman
International humanitarian law prohibits attacks intentionally directed against civilians or civilian objects to protect non-combatants during armed conflicts.
The deliberate targeting of civilians violates the Geneva Conventions. Additional Protocol I (1977) to the Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibits attacks against civilian populations and civilian objects.
Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines war crimes to include “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities; intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives; intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission, among other examples.
Why now?
According to Tolokonnikov, due to fires on the left, Ukrainian-controlled side of the Dnipro River, and the effective artillery strikes by Ukrainian forces, Russian positions on the right, occupied side, have been damaged and some military equipment destroyed.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military and political expert told Byline Times that some artillery equipment was moved from the Kherson direction when the 810th Separate Marine Brigade and the 61st Separate Marine Brigade were redeployed to bolster offensive operations in the Kharkiv region.
While this move could have contributed to recent developments, the main reason for the increase in drone attacks on the right bank of the Kherson region is the heightened difficulty of shelling from the Russian-occupied left bank, Kovalenko explained. Most of the left bank is under fire from Ukrainian defence forces positioned at a higher elevation, making it challenging for Russian forces to establish stable, permanent firing positions.
Russian troops are experiencing a dwindling supply of BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS). Consequently, they have resorted to conducting attacks using much cheaper means: skids.
‘Skids:’ What are they?
For skids, the Russian military uses mostly Mavic drones and, occasionally, the First Person View (FPV) drones.
Mavic and FPV are unmanned aerial vehicles guided to their target by a remote pilot. These drones are also modified versions of commercially available models, equipped with cameras that send live video to the operators. Both drone models carry explosives, often packed with shrapnel.
A Mavic drone, known for its high-resolution cameras, compact foldable design, and advanced flight controls, is popular for aerial photography and videography.
Mavic drones are repurposed for reconnaissance and modified to drop small explosives from a height of 50 meters. They do not crash on impact and can return to their operators.
The FPV drone is designed to attack targets with a warhead but, occasionally, is used for skids. FPV drones are relatively inexpensive, designed for single use, and detonate when they reach their target.
“Mavics drop explosives and return back to their positions if our electronic warfare systems do not shoot them down. In the Bilozerka community, many kamikaze FPV drones crash into cars with explosives and blow up,” said Tolokonnikov.
Defense: Electronic Warfare
The recent shift in Russian tactics makes the protection and defence of Ukrainian rear areas as crucial as targeting Russian troops across the Dnipro River.
The Ukrainian air defence units often use mobile teams operating Soviet-made anti aircraft guns mounted on trucks to shoot down larger drones, such as Shahids.
FPV and Mavik drones are a different story. Both models are small enough to evade radar detection and air defence systems.
Occasionally, at night Khersonians hear Kalashnikovs as the air defence units try to shoot down the drones. Yet, the most effective device against small drones is a hunting rifle as the scattered pellets create a cloud that can take down the drones.
The size of drones isn’t the only challenge. Drones operate on various frequencies, which can be altered to evade detection and jamming.
Electronic warfare (EW) systems aim to disrupt the radio frequencies controlling the drones by using strong signals to force them to lose control and crash. However, EW systems can only cover a limited range of frequencies, making complete coverage difficult. Achieving 50-60% frequency range coverage is considered effective.
To avoid being destroyed by the Ukrainian EW systems, Russian operators frequently change drone frequencies and have reprogrammed them to use a broader range of frequencies.
Initially, Russian drones operated in the 850-930 MHz frequency range, so Ukrainian EW systems were developed to counter them in the 900 MHz range. Russians shifted to 720-1020 MHz frequencies, requiring Ukrainian jamming systems to adapt to this new range.
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Also, the Ukrainian military, police, and fire departments used to be focused on the protection against FPV drones. With the increase in Mavic drone attacks, new EW systems are needed.
“Our army has EW systems but it is not sufficient to cover the coastal front. So the drones continue to enter our space from above and then descend to target civilians,” Tolokonnikov said.
“Investing $300,000 in EW systems to protect the coastline and save civilian lives is necessary,” said a local drone expert. “Every day, we lose people. We lose lives.”