Russia: Targeting civilians in Ukraine with drones

The Russian drones that circled the home of Lyubov and Volodymyr Kindrat in February 2024 arrived to wreak destruction. When they crashed, they destroyed the metal door of the garage and deformed their car. They had been "buzzing all day," 59-year-old Volodymyr recalls.  

Since at least the fall of 2023, Russian drones have ravaged Beryslav, a small city near Kherson in southern Ukraine, right by the Dnipro River. DW analyzed over a hundred attacks, most of which were reported by Ukrainian authorities on Telegram. Between last September and July 2024, they counted over a hundred strikes that left nearly 130 reported civilians injured and 16 dead in Beryslav and its surrounding villages and settlements.

Apart from an in-depth open-source investigation, DW's investigative team also conducted dozens of interviews with Ukrainian officials, war analysts, drone experts, NGOs on the ground, and survivors of drone attacks. They all point to one thing: Russian military may have used drones indiscriminately and systematically against civilians.

Two NGOs supported DW in processing and analyzing data for this investigation. Both the Centre for Information Resilience's Eyes on Russia Projectand the Ukrainian Archive at Mnemonic are dedicated to exposing, documenting and archiving human rights violations and war crimes.

Beryslav under attack 

The Kherson region had fallen to Russian troops in March 2022, only to be retaken by the Ukrainian military in the fall of the same year. The Russians retreated to the opposite bank of the Dnipro River, an area under occupation since the initial days of the full-scale invasion. 

The drones that terrorized the Beryslav population from September 2023 on are so-called First Person View, often referred to by the acronym FPV drones.   

These small quadcopters are now pivotal in this war, their use exceeding military drones, with both sides using them. When fitted with explosives, FPV drones can either drop small bombs mid-flight or crash and thus detonate targets while their cameras provide real-time visuals to their operators.

Such drones are "highly precise weapons,” says Wayne Jordash, adding that the "room for accident and incidental damage” is limited. British lawyer Jordash, who carries the honorary title of King's Counsel, is president of the Global Rights Compliance, a non-profit legal practice specialized in international humanitarian law. He has been advising prosecutors in Ukraine since early on in this war. 

FPV drones did not play a major role in international conflicts before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However that should not pose a legal obstacle to prosecution in international courts, he thinks. 

International humanitarian law mandates that military forces must differentiate between military and civilian targets before they launch an attack. Additionally, they are required to minimize civilian casualties. According to Jordash, serious breaches of these principles "will then be classified as war crimes, and drones are no exception to that." 

Intentional targeting of civilians would be considered a war crime. 

Real-life 'computer game'

According to witnesses, drones circle over Beryslav from sunrise to sunset. Lyubov Kindrat, who relocated to a safer area in Ukraine with her husband after the attack, says it felt like Russian troops were playing a computer game, with "living targets."

Other survivors recall being "hunted down" by Russian drones. DW was able to geolocate and independently verify seven drone attacks that resulted in civilian harm in Beryslav. 

Today, Beryslav resembles a ghost town. More than 90% of its pre-war 11,000 residents have fled, most of those who remain are elderly or disabled. Some of the reported civilian casualties were aged 61 and older. 

According to experts, FPV drones can fly up to 15 km (roughly 10 miles) before running out of battery or losing signal. Taking into consideration their average flight range and trajectory and given that they often return to the drone operator after dropping their load, DW was able to narrow down the area on the opposing, Russian-controlled riverbank from which the attacks most likely originated. 

Several units in question 

It is not possible to attribute all drone strikes in Beryslav to a single Russian unit, as they are constantly on the move. However, DW identified three units which have been in the area since spring 2023 or even late 2022.  

One of them is the 10th Special Purpose Brigade, a highly secretive unit under Russia's military intelligence. In June, Ukrainian authorities opened an investigation into one soldier from this unit for using a drone to target civilians. Apart from this precedent, little is known about their operations. Except that they've received drones.  

Then there is the 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade — which seems to focus on targeting both military and civilian vehicles: parked or moving, with or without passengers. Videos of these attacks, showing drones releasing their munition and explosions, were repeatedly shared on Telegram, mainly by a well-known military blogger and soldier who focuses on the Kherson region. DW was able to geolocate 15 incidents attributed to this infantry unit. 

Alongside one of the video clips showing the destruction of vehicles, DW also found an incriminating post by a drone operator seemingly working on behalf of the 205th stating that "they are all being destroyed" and falsely claiming that there are no civilians left in Beryslav. According to Wayne Jordash, this written statement is "not just a plausible but a strong case of war crimes”: The soldier was "not making any assessment as to how he is going to minimize civilian damage. Effectively he has decided that any individual is a legitimate military target." 

A new type of drone 

The third unit in question is called BARS-33, a volunteer group also known as the Margelov Battalion, named after a famous General in the Soviet Red Army.  

BARS-33 was created to support regular forces and deployed to the area in May 2023.  

The decision to found them goes back to Vladimir Saldo, the governor of the Russian-controlled part of Kherson. To this day, he remains one of the main supporters, together with Konstantin Basyuk, a former KGB agent and now also representing the illegally annexed Ukrainian region of Kherson as Senator in the Russian Federation Council in Moscow.  

In October 2023, Saldo announced on Telegram the unit had tested a new FPV drone during combat, called "Veles". BARS-33 posted videos using this drone to hit what they claim are Ukrainian military. DW geolocated these strikes. They all targeted Beryslav and its surroundings. 

"Veles” is produced by a company called Aero-Hit in Russia's far East – tracing back to Basyuk, as company records show. 

In June, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Aero-Hit, stating that "Veles drones have been used by Russian forces based in Kherson against Ukrainian targets". The same month, CEO Viktor Yatsenko named BARS-33 as the "target customer" of Veles, adding that operators had recorded "over 400 successful combat uses".  

Confronted with DW's findings, Aero-Hit said it is "a non-military company and does not cooperate with the Ministry of Defense”.

It might not be possible to prove who actually ordered and carried out the attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Beryslav. The findings, however, point in the direction of these three units. DW was able to verify that the 10th Special Purpose Brigade, the 205th Motorized Rifle Battalion and BARS-33 units have operated drones in the area.

Furthermore, it is certain that a new domestic Russian drone is being tested in the Kherson region. As drone survivor Lyubov Kindrat recalls, they "trained on the local population." Several other sources DW spoke to have independently testified that Beryslav has effectively been used as a training ground for Russian drone operators to improve their skills.

DW reached out to the administrators of two Telegram channels relevant to our investigation and confronted local politicians Saldo and Basyuk, BARS-33, and the Russian Ministry of Defense with its findings. None of them replied. 

Edited by: Mathias Bölinger