‘Not an isolated incident’: Russian drones stalk Ukraine’s civilians in ‘human safaris’
First, he freezes, caught off guard. Then the young Ukrainian cyclist begins to backpedal awkwardly, his eyes never leaving the Russian drone that hovers ahead of him. It moves closer, and he swings his leg over the bike and tries to run. He doesn't make it.
Even though the footage, posted Friday on the official Telegram account of the 3rd Army Corps of the Russian armed forces, cuts off before the moment of impact, the video's description leaves no doubt of the outcome. The Russian soldiers congratulate themselves on having taken out an “enemy combatant” in the Ukrainian district of Kramatorsk, not far from the front line in the northern Donetsk region.
Two years of 'human safaris'
But the cyclist was visibly unarmed, wearing civilian clothes and looked like any other young man riding his bike down a country road. Independent Russian media outlet Astra quickly accused the Russian military of trying to pass off an unarmed cyclist as a Ukrainian combatant.
The video spread swiftly across social media as influential accounts, including prominent Kremlin critic and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, reposted the footage to denounce the Russian military's apparent cruelty.
Less than 48 hours and hundreds of outraged comments later, the 3rd Army Corps took the video down.
It's far from the first time that Russian drones laden with explosives and controlled from a distance have targeted civilians in Ukraine's frontline regions. The Ukrainians have even found a term for these deadly drone hunts – “human safaris”.
“On the one hand, I'm very happy that there is more attention on this,” said Olga Tokariuk, a specialist in Ukraine at the British think-tank Chatham House. “On the other hand, this is not something new. This has been happening for two years. And the impunity that Russia faces for these attacks just means it can continue.”
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The “human safari” carried out by Russian drone operators seems to have begun in July 2024 in Kherson, a city on the banks of Dnipro River in the country's south.
“Kherson in 2024 was the point at which isolated incidents developed into a sustained campaign,” said Will Kingston-Cox, a specialist in Russia and the Ukraine war at the International Team for the Study of Security in Verona. “Initially, small quadcopters followed individuals and vehicles and dropped explosives. Since then, we have seen FPV (first-person view) impact drones expanding the practice in scale, frequency and geography. Documented targets include pedestrians, cyclists, private cars, buses, ambulances and rescue workers.”
In Kherson, Russian forces installed on the opposite bank of the Dnipro can easily use short-range drones to target the population who had either remained in or returned to the city following its recapture by the Ukrainian army at the end of 2022.
'Those seconds are so precious'
Numerous eye-witness accounts, including several reported by FRANCE 24's Observers team, describe a climate of constant fear of being targeted and killed by a Russian drone.
Read more How Russian drones are terrorising civilians in Ukraine
Tokariuk, who wrote a report on the “human safaris” in 2025, said that people she'd interviewed in Kherson had spoken of being under a state of almost permanent tension.
“Something really striking that they told me was they would only go out there if the weather was bad – because drones cannot really operate in rain or snow or fog,” she said. “And they would also tell me they would drive really fast in their cars, because that maximises your chances of survival if you're hunted by a drone … People wouldn't use their seatbelts when they're driving, because those seconds are so precious when they see a drone hovering above their car about to hit them, and they need to get out of the car really quickly.”
For its part, the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine condemned these “human safaris” as a war crime, for deliberately targeting a civilian population, and a potential crime against humanity, for its possible use as a tool to carry out forcible population transfers.
“They are targeting precisely not only civilians in their day-to-day life, but also hospitals and shops and very basic things that sustain day-to-day life for people,” said Ivan Klyszcz, a specialist in Russia at the Centre of Defence and Security in Tallinn, Estonia. “So there's definitely a pressure on the civilian population, and inevitably this leads to people to relocate. I cannot say that this is part of a larger plan for population transfer – but it is working out that way.”
The UN commission reported that roughly 150 civilians had been killed and hundreds more wounded in Kherson region by short-range drones since the end of 2024.
Veronika Hinman, a specialist in the Ukraine war at the University of Portsmouth who has studied the use of drones in the conflict, said that while she wasn't convinced the practice could be described as official army tactics, it certainly seemed tolerated by the military brass.
“I've been trying to think whether this could be just an isolated incident, whether we could consider these drone operators as 'bad apples' or rogue soldiers acting independently – or whether, if you look at the company itself that, they are remnants of an informal militia integrated into Russian forces later on,” she said. “But no, it doesn't seem anything like that. It's not an isolated incident.”
Cutting promos
Although Kherson remains ground zero for this grim practice, the fact that Friday's cyclist was targeted by a drone in the distant Kramatorsk district shows that these “human safaris” have spread beyond the battered city.
Tokariuk said similar attacks had also been reported in Ukraine's border region of Sumy, as well as in Kharkhiv, which sits across the border from Russia's Belgorod region.
She maintained it was impossible that the drone operators didn't know the people they were targeting were civilians.
“They know exactly what they're doing,” she said. “The operators of these drones, they can see the real-time footage of who the drone is chasing.”
The practice is also likely a macabre way to train Russian troops to pilot the remote-controlled drones, Hinman said.
“Civilians are not protected. They are easy targets because of what they are wearing, as opposed to soldiers on the battlefield,” she said.
It may be that these “human safaris” can also allow Russian officers to made sure that the drone operators under their command won't be overcome by remorse during combat operations. After all, soldiers who are apparently prepared to target old people leaving their homes and children playing in the street – cases documented by the UN commission – would likely be ready to carry out any other order.
Read more Zelensky calls on allies to cover €27 billion gap for Ukraine's air defence needs
Hinman said that these videos also served encourage Russian viewers to donate money for the production and purchase of more drones to deploy at the front.
“One of the reasons why they post these on social media, why they make these social media posts, can be to show off what these drones are being used for to the people who fundraise for them,” she said.
By seemingly trying to pass off an unarmed civilian for a hardened Ukrainian soldier, Kingston-Cox said, Friday's video appeared to have backfired – possibly, he said, explaining why it was later taken down.
“That discrepancy made the video both a propaganda liability and potentially important evidence,” he said. “Operational security concerns cannot be excluded, but reputational and legal containment appears more plausible – particularly because the footage appeared on a channel associated with the army rather than an anonymous pro-war 'miliblogger' (Russian military blogger) account.”
But Tokariuk said she didn't think the controversy the video had caused would have any real impact on the Russian army's use of these tactics.
“These drones are cheap to operate – they are flying the distances that they need to,” she said. “In those border regions they use drones because it works. It really keeps civilians in terror. It makes people flee.“
She said the seeming impunity that Russia had enjoyed for more than two years now over its “human safaris” made her worry that other states or actors could start to carry out their own version of the low-cost war crime.
“It is very easy to replicate elsewhere,” she said. “And civilians are completely defenceless against it.”
This article has been adapted from the original in French.