As a former English & Literature teacher, I am all too familiar with the renowned 1924 short story by Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game,” or “The Hounds of Zaroff.” In this modernist take on a parable, the main character & big-game hunter, Rainsford, must himself survive being hunted by the cold, calculated, big-game hunter, and Russian imperialist-in-exile, General Zaroff. Unfortunately, when teaching this story for the final time in September of 2021, I never foresaw that I would actually witness that, which my school’s textbook had dismissed as some stereotypical Russophobic trope, become reality. I offer a passage to underpin the nature of the horrific crimes against humanity carried out by Z-terrorists in Kherson Oblast, Ukraine today before diving further into their depraved acts.
“I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this island, built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purposes–there are jungles with a maze of traits in them, hills, swamps–“
“But the animal, General Zaroff?”
“Oh,” said the general, “it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. No other hunting compares with it for an instant. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits.”
Rainsford’s bewilderment showed in his face.
“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt,” explained the general. “So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?’ And the answer was, of course, `It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.”‘
“But no animal can reason,” objected Rainsford.
“My dear fellow,” said the general, “there is one that can.”
– “The Most Dangerous Game” (Connell, 1924)
Perhaps Connell’s “Russophobia” from a hundred years past was more prescience than just an indulgence in the stereotypes of the times.
Hunting Humans: Russian Drone Operators Turned Serial Killers
In the last two months, a Russian drone unit based in and around Oleshky, Kherson Oblast has been routinely hunting human beings up & down the right bank (western bank) of the Dnipro. Of note are the suburbs to the direct east of the regional capital city of Kherson and the Dniprovskyi raion of the city itself. Antonivka, Kindiyka, and Dniprovskyi raion are ground-zero for some of the most publicly and brazenly perpetrated crimes against civilians to date – even amongst the tragedies of almost three years of conflict.
According to data collected by Andrew Perpetua from Telegram posts and press briefings from the Kherson Military Administration, Kherson Prosecutor’s Office, Kherson Police, National Police, and Ministry of Internal Affairs, drone attacks against civilians have skyrocketed in this segment of Kherson Oblast.
The characteristics of the Kherson direction of the southern front are quite unique, as the geography dictates how the occupier seeks to terrorize Ukrainian civilians living on the right bank of the Dnipro. Most locations within Kherson city or its suburbs are truly only 5-6 kilometers from confirmed Russian-held territory on the outskirts of the settlements of Dachi and Oleshky on the left bank. With just a kilometer or two of riverine landscape between Kherson and the occupied territory, Russian forces have increasingly employed FPV kamikaze drones and quadcopter drones to stalk civilian targets, and drop grenades or smash their target. This is a trend seen since late 2023, but really manifesting in the early stages of 2024.
As both Russian and Ukrainian use of small cheap Mavic-style drones increased through the late-winter of 2023-2024 and into the spring of 2024, the Russians in Kherson began to employ this as a method of terrorism alongside their infamous artillery-based siege tactics. In addition to the regular airstrikes, mortar, artillery and multiple-rocket-launcher shelling, Ukrainian civilians of Kherson’s eastern suburbs began to experience targeted FPV & drone-dropped grenade attacks in May and June of 2024 according to data fromUA Map.
In the video above dating back to late-May 2024, from the Russian milblogger, Kot Dobrokhod, the narrator brags about the targeting of a civilian man with a sick addition of memes of infamous Ukrainian drone operator & leader of Birds of Magyar, Robert Brovdi. The group regularly post content of this nature, showing specifically their focus on the civilians of the Kherson region. Seen here, Russian drone operators target homes and utilize a variety of munitions to increase the amount of damage to civilian private property and public infrastructure. 40mm VOG grenades are often dropped from quadcopters and used against vehicles and people, while incendiary munitions are used to set structures alight in hopes of drawing DSNS or National Police personnel to the site. The targeting of emergency rescue workers, humanitarian aid workers, and police officers have been staples of Russian drone operators’ modus operandi.
A prominent source of videographic evidence of Russian drone attacks in the Kherson region is the channel self-stylized as “From Mariupol to the Carpathians,” or Osvedomitell Alex. Featured heavily on the Telegram channel’s feed are drone-dropped grenade attacks and FPV kamikaze strikes against civilians and their private property in Antonivka, Kindiyka, and Dniprovskyi raion. On August 23rd, the channel posted the video below reveling in the assassination of a member of the Kherson Police. In their daily press release for Kherson Oblast, the National Police of Ukraine described the event:
In the evening, the Russian military insidiously attacked a police car with a drone. A 38-year-old officer of the Security Police Department was killed as a result of a direct hit. While evacuating the body of the deceased, the enemy attacked the official car of the patrol police department again, causing mechanical damage to the car, but the officers were not injured. Also, a 48-year-old local resident was injured in the explosion, he sustained a mine-blast trauma and a shrapnel wound to his hip.
Osvedomitell Alex offered a link to the original poster, another popular Russian milblogger whose channel prominently features videos of a similar nature, and captioned the murder with two words: “Минус свинья.” [One less pig.] (Osvedomitell Alex).
These are just two individual examples of the nature of drone-based war crimes – one of the first instances and one of the most recent. It offers a fairly comprehensive glimpse at the brutality of the crimes, but also the variety of objects targeted. Importantly, these crimes need to be looked at from a data-driven perspective, in order that a pattern of behavior be established outside of these two blatant offenses.
Blood Lust: Russian Drone Operators Ramp Up Attacks on Civilians
Utilizing Andrew Perpetua’s UA Map database, I compiled data from June 22nd – August 23rd relating to civilian casualties resulting specifically from drone attacks of any kind. As the resident mapper for the UA Map’s news story database, I noticed around mid-July that something was happening.
Attacks were becoming more frequent – and more deadly. The data showed a general trend upward in terms of frequency of attacks from June to July, but also an upward trend in relation to casualties per event or day. Antonivka and Kindiyka, registered zero drone attack casualties in June according to the data, whereas Dniprovskyi raion had two events. July saw a jump with Antonivka experiencing at least ten days of casualty events and twenty-four total casualties. Dniprovskyi raion had the same frequency of casualty events and twenty-two casualties.
The transition from July to August saw strikes in Antonivka and Kindiyka skyrocket, while Dniprovskyi raion saw the strikes from its busiest and deadliest month level off some in the early days of August (nine events with sixteen casualties). Compare that to the previous month, and for August, the situation seems to at least be holding, if not improving for Dniprovskyi’s residents.
In Antonivka, the number of drone casualty events during the first twenty-three days of August was double that of the entire month of July, and those strikes resulted in a staggering sixty-six casualties. Several mass casualty events saw Antonivka sustain almost a dozen casualties from drones in one day, three separate times in the same month.
Kindiyka, a small egg-shaped suburb wedged between Antonivka and Dniprovskyi, was not much of a target until late-July, where it saw a string of strikes. It hasn’t been until earlier this week that Kindiyka has started to sustain multiple casualties more regularly. The settlement sustained nearly half of all of its casualties – five casualties -out of a total of fourteen just in the last week.
The pattern is clear – more frequent strikes, more deadly strikes, and a more brazen and bold pattern of conduct. Russian forces went from harassing homeowners and farmers (which they still do more than anything else) to brazenly murdering Ukraine’s police officers in the streets with drone-dropped grenades. Fortunately, most of the victims of these terrorist attacks do survive (almost 94%) – although many do so with life-altering injuries like amputations and psychological trauma.
Note: 144 total casualties were registered – 19 were not given ages by sources. As a result, they are only represented in the “Casualty Status” graphic.
One final aspect of analysis is the age of the victims. Now, Ukraine has an aging population, so it is to be expected that victims’ ages skew towards senior citizens. And initially they did, thirty-seven of fifty-four victims (68%) from June and July were over the age of fifty. After accounting for August’s strikes, the total number of victims over fifty is only seventy-eight out of 144 total casualties from June 22nd to August 23rd. Roughly 54% of victims are now over fifty. Recent weeks have seen attacks against the oldest victim, 93, and the youngest victim, 5, happen just within days of each other. As Russian drone operators expand their conduct of crimes, they have become less discriminate in regards to which demographics they choose to target as victims.
Much like the bloodthirsty deranged General Zaroff, these serial killers have become bored with the hunt of the elderly. They have been increasingly targeting children, humanitarian delivery vehicles, water distribution centers, DSNS and repair workers, and, of course, the Kherson Police. Needing increasingly difficult human “game,” the terrorist Russian drone operators should realize that, if it is a hunt they want, then the ZSU is waiting. This “people-poaching” is nothing more than the murder, torture, and terrorizing of defenseless innocents for which they will have pay eventually. They may just find themselves hunted and vanquished at the hands of their victims, much like Connell’s General Zaroff.
Sources
English Sources:
Connell, Richard. The Most Dangerous Game. N.p. Web. <https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/1_The%20Most%20Dangerous%20Game%20by%20Richard%20Connell.pdf>.
DanieleB. “Data Driven Analysis on FPV Drone Usage in the Ukrainian Russian Conflict • Tochnyi.Info.” Tochnyi.info. N.p., 5 Jan. 2024. Web. <https://tochnyi.info/2024/01/fpv-data-analysis/>.
