Drone chase in a Kherson marketplace: 52-year-old man survives the attack

Ukrainian police have released footage recorded in a marketplace in the southern city of Kherson. The video shows a civilian being pursued by a Russian FPV drone.

The 52-year-old man survived the attack but suffered injuries and a concussion, according to reports.

The use of FPV drones in residential areas behind the front line has renewed debate over the civilian-safety dimension of the war. Kherson has been subject to sustained regular attacks because of its proximity to the front.

MHA Analysis

The significance of this footage is not one incident but the way cheap FPV drones turn a front line from a geographic boundary into a question of range. That a device costing a few hundred dollars can track a single person in a civilian area extends the area requiring protection to an entire city. It changes the economics of air defence as much as the civilian-safety dimension of the war: stopping hundred-dollar threats with million-dollar systems is not a sustainable equation.