cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11806379
[Original in German. This is a paraphrased automated translation with minimal edits.]
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"I think the Russians saw me through the drone camera. When I heard the drone, I hid in the stairwell for ten minutes. When I came back into the yard, the drone hit right next to me. My legs folded away and then I only saw a blood fountain, says the boy, who is now home after the operation. Andrij's mother, 43-year-old Yuliia Spitsa, is convinced that the Russian drone pilot knew that he had hunted a child. But that did not stop him.
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Andrij has injury of drone shards on his leg. He was rescued by Ukrainian soldiers who were passing by. They put on a pressure bandage and took the boy first to his mother, later to the hospital. Now the 11-year-old can walk again. His family says that compared to other victims of Russian drone strikes in Cherson, Andrij was quite lucky.
The 11-year-old can recognize different types of Russian weapons by their sounds, his playground is surrounded by air defenses.
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According to Human Rights Watch, 30 civilians were killed by Russian drones in Cherson between May and December 2024, and at least 500 were injured. In January 2025, short-range drones, particularly FPV drones, accounted for 70 percent of all civilian casualties in the Ukraine-controlled part of the Cherson area, according to the United Nations.
The port city of Cherson is shelled almost daily. The city on the right bank of the river Dnipro was liberated by Ukrainian troops in November 2022. According to local authorities, about 60,000 people still live here today, compared to 279,000 in January 2022.
“Santa”, the Ukrainian soldier, watched this video [showing the drone attack on the 1-year old Andrij] several times and tried to analyze the action of the Russian drone pilot.
"This was not a practice or a mistake. The man was not a beginner – he simply cold-bloodedly chased a civilian. The Russians know that they can no longer take Cherson. And they simply try to destroy what they are not entitled to, what they cannot get, says the man who has been defending his hometown since the first days of the great war."
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In one of many related report, France24 published ‘Not an isolated incident’: Russian drones stalk Ukraine’s civilians in ‘human safaris',
The video of a Ukrainian cyclist being targeted and killed by a short-range drone posted – and later deleted – by the Russian military Friday left viewers outraged and shaken. But it’s not the first time that Russian drone operators have been accused of terrorising Ukrainian civilians by deliberately targeting them in “human safaris” denounced as a war crime by an independent UN commission.
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Poor kid man. That's just horrible.