Drones, once primarily used for surveillance, have evolved into weapons for hunting human targets in Ukraine.
During June and July, the Russian military dramatically increased drone attacks on civilians in the Kherson region, with the last two weeks breaking all records. Estimates suggest 50 people have been killed or injured in the attacks.
In the port city of Kherson, drones patrol the skies, hovering over devastated coastal suburbs and villages, searching for an old lady with a bucket here or a teenager on a bicycle there—to eliminate by dropping explosives.
“We’ve got something new here,” said Olha, a grocery store owner in Kherson. “It’s called skid, literally ‘a drop’.”
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Daily skid statistics are terrifying: on 24 July, a Russian drone dropped explosives on a woman in Romashkove village, hospitalising her with blast and cranial injuries and shrapnel wounds to her legs.
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The same day, a private house in Kherson’s suburbs caught fire after a skid attack. While firefighters were extinguishing the fire, a second drone attack damaged the fire truck with shrapnel. And in Kherson city, a drone attack on a 57-year-old woman, left her with a concussion, leg wound, and blast injuries.
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The following day, two drones struck residents in the suburb of Kindiyka, injuring a couple and killing a 51-year-old man.
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In Antoniivka, another suburb, a drone attacked a vehicle carrying humanitarian aid, injuring the driver, and another, later that day, wounded a 72-year-old woman. A resident of Sadove village, also 72, suffered blast trauma, concussion, and shrapnel wounds to his forearm after a drone attack.
Hiding under a tree in front of her high rise, Tatiana pointed out broken windows and shattered doors. For two months, drones have been patrolling the skies over her home, dropping explosives on civilian cars and people.
[Edit typo.]
The soviets didn’t have drones.
Those tactics were first used and perfected by the US.
Notice the reference to tactics, not to technology.
Loitering ammunition is a tactic that is only possible through drone technology.
But sure, intentionally terrorizing the civilian population as a tactic is as old as war itself…
You have heard of landmines? Other types of booby traps? Are these not also simply lying in wait to kill anyone who chances upon them?
Yes and there is a reason there is a global ban on them.
But there is also a big difference: locals usually know quite well where the land-mines are approximately and can avoid them pretty well. It doesn’t really instill terror to know that that field over there you better not walk over.
Loitering ammunition on the other hand is usually well audible, but it is not entirely clear where it lurks and what the targets are. Pretty much anyone anytime can be targets and often collateral damage is not an unwanted side effect of bombing a wedding etc. but the actual real intended effect to destroy community cohesion so that insurgents don’t have anywhere to hide or rest.
I think they are talking about the targeting of civilians, which the Soviets were quite awful for during WW2.
Yes. Thanks for clarifying.
And what do you think the US did in Afghanistan and Pakistan and many other places?
I am really no fan of whataboutism, but this is exactly what US troops and their allies did with drones and the Russians are only copying those tactics.
IMHO “loitering ammunition” is similar to anti-personal mines and there should be a global ban on this kind of drone use.
Everybody was quite awful with targeting Civilians during WW2. By far the worst was obviously Nazi Germany and they murdered about 19 million Sowjet Citizens. For instance also Ukraine was hit particularly bad by Germanys “Lebensraum” fanatism, ethnic cleansing and genocide. What came back to Germany was the total war that they brought over the world.
Stalin did a lot of heinous shit, but WW2 is a very bad argument against the former Sowjet Union or todays Russia.
Sure until the Soviets started pushing the Germans back, and then the Soviets started pillaging and raping everything on the way to Berlin .
WW2 is a very good argument against the Soviet Union. They started it with Nazi Germany in fact.
You’re right that Nazi behavior was horrible. However, please don’t try to justify war crimes with whataboutisms and reciprocity.
I am not trying to justify war crimes. However the notion that the actions during WW2 would be indicative of any countries current military behaviour, seems not to hold up. Making such a claim also in reverse risks downplaying Nazi atrocities, as the current German military is not committing such acts anymore.
Russia is murdering civillians in Ukraine today. That in itself is to be condemned. tying it so some historic observation does not fulfill any purpose in my eyes except of trying to create an image of an “always evil Russian”, which again whistles some problematic historic tunes.
All of which makes sense. However, that’s not exactly what your previous comment seemed to say. I also still find the idea of justified reciprocity (“got back total war”) objectionable. Modern society doesn’t usually sanction this kind of eye-for-an-eye retribution.
Finally, the way this thread started was the idea of Putin being “a Soviet” , supposedly as in being KGB-trained, and thus having a penchant for “Soviet” tactics. That’s a totally different thing than claiming modern Germany acting in line with Nazi-era Germany, because there was a pretty thorough break in between.
(I do find it debatable whether terrorizing civilians is legitimately a particularly “Soviet” tactic though.)