Antonia Langford
A Russian drone has appeared to deliberately target a marked United Nations aid convoy in the Kherson region of Ukraine, severely damaging one of the vehicles.
A video released by the UN, taken from one of the cars, showed the moment the first person view (FPV) drone hit the road between two vehicles, just inches away from the second car’s bonnet, causing an explosion that damaged the back of the car in front.
No UN staff were killed as a result of the attack.
Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said Russia had “targeted UN personnel” and urged the body to “clearly condemn Russia’s terrorist attack”.
Andrea De Domenico, the Ukraine head of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said: “We were going to deliver some humanitarian assistance in Ostriv, an area that has not been served for many, many months.”
De Domenico said that the cars had been hit twice: once as they passed the bridge into Ostriv, and a second time as they were delivering aid on site.
“I don’t know who did the attack,” De Domenico added in a clip posted by OCHA.
However, a first-person feed circulated by military bloggers showed the Russian drone’s perspective as it nosedived on to the moving vehicles, with UN markings clearly visible, before a second drone located the stationary vehicles in a nearby car park and attempted to finish them off.
“Any equipment is a legitimate target, any movement of personnel on the ground will be suppressed,” wrote From Mariupol to the Carpathians, the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel that shared the footage.
The channel, which frequently posts exclusive drone feeds from Kherson, wrote that the UN vehicle had been “completely destroyed”. The post was deleted shortly after.
The channel admin claimed, without providing evidence, that the Ukrainian army was using humanitarian convoys to transport military supplies and evacuate soldiers. Russian forces have frequently offered such unsubstantiated justifications while striking civilian targets.
The channel credited the attack to drone operators from Russia’s 18th Combined Arms Army. A UN commission has previously attributed drone assaults on civilians to members of that field army.
Volodymyr Zelensky said that the targeted vehicle was carrying eight UN staff members alongside De Domenico.
“The Russians could not have failed to know who they were targeting,” the Ukrainian president said.
FPV drones transmit a live feed to their pilots, as if they are looking directly at the scene. This allows them to identify moving targets from above. The quality of the feed is such that the pilot can distinguish between military and civilian targets.
“Our people were very, very lucky to escape with their lives,” said OCHA chief Tom Fletcher. He said the UN would pursue “full investigations and accountability”.
Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine, used to house almost 300,000 people. Now it is one of the country’s most embattled cities, subjected to a constant “drone siege”, and only about 20 per cent of those residents remain, many of them elderly.
Russian troops located across the Dnipro River mount frequent attacks on the city and surrounding region with camera-guided FPV drones. Moscow’s forces have been accused of hunting, injuring and killing civilians in Kherson using the small quadcopters in order to train their operators, or for sport, in what has been described as a “human safari”.
In 2025, about 2500 drones were deployed in the region each week, but this year the number has more than doubled to 5500. Last month, Russian drone attacks damaged or destroyed at least 230 vehicles as Moscow intensified its efforts to immobilise transport routes in the region.
In October 2025, Russian forces attacked a UN humanitarian mission delivering supplies to Bilozerka, a tiny rural settlement near Kherson.
The Telegraph, London
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