The vegetable seller from Kherson, in southern Ukraine, who appears in a video released on Tuesday being chased by a Russian drone, has survived the attack and can now tell his story. The 52-year-old man, identified as Yurii, says he arrived at the market in a van with his wife. They were setting up their stall when they came into the sights of a first-person view (FPV) unmanned aerial vehicle. “My wife ran out and the drone started circling towards the vehicle,” he recounts from the hospital in another video published by the military administration of the Kherson region on their Telegram account.
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“I showed it: ‘Look, there are only vegetables here,’ but it started flying directly at me,” Yurii recounts. In the footage, also released by the military administration in the area and shared by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X, the unmanned aerial vehicle can be seen chasing the vegetable seller as he tries in vain to slip between vehicles.
He recalls that the drone seemed to focus solely on him. “It wasn’t recording me, I had garlic in my hands.” In the video, the drone is seen hovering in front of the man until an explosion occurs. Yurii suffered shrapnel wounds and a concussion during the attack.
Zelensky described the attack as an example of a “human safari,” a term used by Ukrainian authorities to describe a hunt for civilians by Russian forces. It is a practice that allows Russian drone operators to hone their skills on civilians before being deployed to fight in eastern Ukraine.
