“Operation to destroy peaceful life.” Russian drone operators “hunt” civilians in Kherson every day – The Guardian reports

Oleksandr Ustenko survived three attacks by Russian drones. The first time, in late July, the occupiers hit a police car parked in the center of the city as it passed by, sending it crashing to the ground in a blast wave. The second time, in mid-August, the Russians hit a cistern with drinking water while a man was standing in line. Then the driver died, and Oleksandr Ustenko got a concussion. The third time, in late September, he heard the buzz of a drone and tried to hide under the branches of a tree, but a grenade fell a meter from the man, severing his left index finger.

The Russian occupiers are openly boasting that they are attacking on social networks “everything that moves.” Kherson has been under mass drone attacks since July, and the city’s residents experience thousands of resets every month. At least 24 civilians were killed and hundreds were injured. From July 1 to October 11, drones injured more than 400 civilians, including seven children.

The article emphasizes that the Dnipro River, which protected Kherson from a full-scale Russian offensive, also allows tens of thousands of civilians to live just a couple of kilometers from Russian troops. This makes the city extremely vulnerable to attacks by Russian drones.

Attacks intensified in the summer after Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from precarious positions on the other side. The Russians then began to advance into the reedbeds and wooded areas to launch the drone into Kherson and return before being detected by the Defense Forces.

“You can still buy a fancy lavender latte in the city cafes, but the barista may warn you to park your car under a tree while she makes it. So far, the numerous green streets of Kherson provide a certain natural shelter, but the trees have already turned yellow, and the bare winter branches will make people even more vulnerable,” the newspaper writes.

Russians throw grenades at buses and people standing at bus stops, at civilians riding bicycles, queuing for humanitarian aid or going home with shopping.

As The Guardian writes, the invaders use modified Chinese Mavic drones, which are too small, too numerous and fly too low to be detected by traditional air defense means.

The article says that many townspeople have more or less adapted to life under the threat of gunfire, but drones have sown a new fear — now every time people leave their homes, “they know they can be followed by killers.”

“This is a systematic, well-planned operation to destroy peaceful life in Kherson. The tactic of this hybrid war is not to win on the battlefield, but to destroy the civilian population so that the government negotiates or surrenders,” said Serhiy Kuzan, head of the analytical center Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation.

Recently, drones have also started dropping small anti-personnel landmines that can tear off an arm or a leg from anyone who steps on or picks them up. Occupiers sometimes cover mines with glue and lay them in the ground to make them more difficult to detect. Oleksandr Ustenko, who stayed in Kherson to take care of his disabled mother, said that he stopped picking vegetables in the garden behind the house: “I’m afraid to go to the garden because there are a lot of weeds where mines can be hidden.”

22-year-old sailor Dmytro Olifirenko, who received a shrapnel wound from the explosion of a Russian grenade near a bus stop, said that neither the police nor sappers enter the most dangerous areas of the city near the river. Local residents developed their own “amateur methods of demining”: some shoot mines with pneumatic weapons, others throw bricks at them, and still others push long wooden boards to the mines until they detonate.