On August 4, 2026, Ukrainian police released a video showing a drone chasing a man around his van, which he used as a street stall. The drone then exploded on impact, injuring him. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky shared the video online, calling it a Russian "safari" attack on civilians. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called it a "barbaric war crime" and said these drone "safari" attacks are a "deliberate and systemic Russian strategy," asking the international community to condemn them (BBC; Reuters).

The victim is Yuriy, a 52-year-old who sells vegetables on the street in the Kherson region. He spoke from a hospital bed in a video posted by the Kherson regional governor. Yuriy suffered a concussion, trauma, and multiple shrapnel wounds — injuries caused by small pieces of metal from the explosion. His van was destroyed (BBC).

A team at the BBC called BBC Verify, which checks whether videos and photos are real and where they were taken, confirmed the footage was filmed at a market space beside a roundabout in the Tavriiskyi district in northern Kherson. The earliest public copy of the video appeared on a pro-Ukrainian Instagram account on a Tuesday morning. It is not clear who filmed the attack or how the footage was captured (BBC).

Zelensky wrote on Telegram: "The world must see this. It must see every piece of evidence that Russia has gone mad..." The ellipsis appears in the original quotation as reported by the BBC (BBC).

A 2025 UN report found that Russian armed forces "recurrently killed and injured civilians" in the Kherson area by using drones to target them. The UN also said that posting videos of civilians being killed or injured can itself be a war crime — specifically, the crime of "outrages upon personal dignity," which means humiliating or degrading victims, even after the fact. That finding matters here because the Kherson vendor footage was actively shared by Ukrainian police and then promoted by senior officials, including the president, on social media. The UN's position raises a question that the available facts cannot answer: whether sharing such videos, even to raise awareness, crosses the legal line the UN has described (BBC).

To understand the background, it helps to know that Kherson is split in two by the Dnipro River. One side is controlled by Ukraine; the other is occupied by Russia. This river has become a front line where small drones — flying machines similar to the ones hobbyists use, but in this case carrying explosives — fly freely and target civilians who are out in the open. The word "safari," as Ukrainian officials use it, describes drones that circle overhead and then chase individual civilians in open areas, like hunters tracking prey. International observers have documented this tactic for over a year in this area.

What makes this incident stand out is not the tactic itself, which the UN has already said happens repeatedly. It is the combination of three things: the video was verified as real and its location confirmed, the victim is named and spoke about what happened to him, and Ukraine's top diplomat is arguing these attacks are planned and systematic, not random. When Sybiha calls it a "deliberate and systemic Russian strategy," he is invoking a legal idea called command responsibility — the principle that if attacks happen again and again and can be tied to an organized military structure, that carries more legal weight than a one-off incident by a single soldier acting on their own.

There is one complication, though. BBC Verify could not determine who filmed the attack or how it was recorded. The video first appeared through a pro-Ukrainian Instagram account, not through a neutral journalist or independent monitoring group. That matters because in wartime, all sides use videos and social media to shape public opinion. The footage itself appears authentic — its location was verified, and the injuries match what the victim described. But exactly how it was filmed and first distributed is not fully established in the public record.

Russia has not publicly responded to this specific allegation in the sources available. Without a Russian response, there is no counter-account of who operated the drone, which military unit was involved, or what the intended target was.

Sybiha's call for international condemnation follows a pattern Ukraine has used before: release compelling video evidence, get trusted outlets to verify it quickly, and use the combination to pressure international institutions and foreign governments. Whether this particular incident leads to any new diplomatic action will depend on whether more details emerge about who operated the drone or which unit was responsible in the coming days.