Horror footage shows moment Russian drone stalks market vendor before dive bomb explosion

Ukraine’s National Police has shared footage capturing the disturbing moment a Russian drone hunted and attacked a civillian man at a market in Kherson.

In the video, an FPV drone can be seen following a man around a white van as he frantically attempts to get out of its way. The man runs around the van several times as the drone continues to stalk him.

It then suddenly darts downward and obliterates beside the man. Ukrainian police said the man was a 52-year-old resident of Mykolaiv who had been trading at the market and displayed no signs of being a member of the military.

The man miraculously survived the blast but was injured during the explosion. He sustained shrapnel wounds and suffered a concussion, Ukrainska Pravda reports.

He is undergoing medical treatment. Ukrainian police have labeled the attack as another Russian war crime.

It comes as authorities in Ukraine said Tuesday that Russian aerial strikes had caused at least five civilian deaths. More than 16,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, according to the United Nations, with the vast majority of them occurring in areas under the Ukrainian government’s control.

Casualties have risen steadily each year. Russian attacks on Mykolaiv, including its port, killed an 89-year-old woman and wounded seven other people aged between two and 83, Ukrainian regional officials said.

A Russian strike on civilian infrastructure in southern Odesa region destroyed a private home and wounded two people, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional military administration. Elsewhere, in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, six Russian glide bombs killed two girls aged 5 and 10 and an elderly woman, Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration, said.

Russian forces also struck Kharkiv and 18 towns and villages across the northern region over the previous 24 hours, killing one person and injuring seven others, including an 8-year-old child, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.

Strikes in Balakliia, also in the Kharkiv region, significantly damaged an apartment building, a library, three stores and more than 10 houses, wounding two women, local authorities said.

Two 250-kilo (550 lbs) glide bombs struck Kramatorsk in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine on Tuesday morning, injuring 22 people, local officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone attacks in the region around Moscow killed five people, local officials said Tuesday. Since Russia’s invasion more than four years ago, Ukraine has developed long-range drones that can hit targets deep inside Russia. In the past year, they have battered oil facilities, major storage depots and other key infrastructure.

The death toll from a drone strike Monday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Arkhipo-Osipovka rose to seven, including four children, regional authorities said.

On Tuesday morning, Krasnodar regional authorities updated the number of wounded to 58, with 21 of them hospitalized.