24 hours in Kherson: Inside the Ukrainian city where Russian drones hunt civilians from the sky
In Kherson, the day begins underground.
Listen to this article
The people of the city don't wake up to the blaring of the alarm on their phone, they're waking up in basements with their thoughts already on what awaits them outside.
Above them, somewhere beyond the cracked concrete, boarded windows and damaged apartment blocks, it’s likely there are already be drones in the sky.
For the civilians who remain in the Ukrainian city, a single ordinary day is now shaped by one question: is it safe to step outside?
The answer is almost never yes.
Kherson, liberated from Russian occupation in 2022, sits under constant attack from Russian forces positioned across the Dnipro River. What was once a busy southern Ukrainian city has been turned into a place where residents live by instinct, sound and risk calculation.
Every journey to buy bread, collect medicine, deliver aid or visit a neighbour has become a gamble with a drone operator potentially watching from miles away.
On several occasions, LBC’s conversations with residents in Kherson have been cut short by air raid sirens, as another wave of missiles or drones was reported heading towards the city.
LBC spoke to volunteers from Hope For Ukraine, a humanitarian charity who are working in the city to deliver food, fresh bread, medical supplies and solar energy resilience kits to civilians living through the daily attacks.
The charity has been operating since 2016, providing humanitarian aid and long-term support to communities affected by the war. Its programmes include family support, medical aid, refugee assistance, children’s support, frontline assistance and solar energy resilience kits designed to keep lights, phones and cooking equipment working during blackouts.
They say they have delivered more than 4,000 tons of aid, provided more than 100 million meals and supported millions of families since it began work in Ukraine.
In Kherson, those programmes are no longer just aid categories. They are the difference between a family being able to cook underground, charge a phone, receive food or survive another day without stepping into the open.
Natalia Serhienko, a local community leader in Kherson who helps coordinate aid distributions for Hope For Ukraine, told LBC even parts of the city once considered relatively safe are now under threat.
“Even the neighbourhood that used to be safe was mined, and there were many drone drops,” she said. “Moving around the city is very, very difficult. Regrettably, the situation is not improving.”
She said aid workers are forced to distribute supplies quickly in the street because gathering people together can make them a target.
“Working in such conditions is extremely difficult because moving along the roads is very dangerous,” she said. “We are currently distributing aid directly on the street all the time, and creating crowds of people is also dangerous, but we just try to hand out the aid very quickly.
“I want Kherson to be heard, not forgotten, and not left alone.”
Ms Serhienko said around 60,000 to 70,000 people remain in the city.
In just one recent 24-hour period, local reports from Kherson described a 68-year-old man attacked by a drone at 5am in the Korabelnyi district; a drone strike at a bus stop that left a 60-year-old man with severe blast injuries and shrapnel wounds; a 61-year-old man killed while riding a motorcycle in Zelenivka; a 51-year-old man badly wounded after trying to neutralise a Russian drone before it exploded; and another civilian killed by a hidden landmine in nearby Komyshany.
This is not exceptional, Hope For Ukraine’s volunteers say. But is now a part of is daily life.
They describe Kherson as a “basement city”, a place where civilians survive beneath the streets while Russian drones, mines, artillery and missiles decide the shape of the day above ground.
6am: The city listens before it moves
The morning begins in silence.
In homes that are no longer really homes, people wake on mattresses laid out in basements, cellars and shelters. Some sleep fully dressed. Some keep bags packed. Many have learned to recognise the sounds above them before they even open their eyes.
The sharp, high-pitched buzz of commercial-style drone propellers now carries a meaning everyone understands.
It means wait. It means do not move. It means the street may already be watched.
Before anyone leaves a basement, they listen for the drones. Before anyone crosses a road, they scan the sky. Before anyone looks down a street, they study the ground.
The danger is not only above. Russian forces have scattered small PFM-1 “petal” mines across parts of the city, which residents refer to as “gingerbread” mines because they can look like harmless scraps of plastic or debris. A child could mistake one for rubbish. An elderly person could step on one in poor light. A person walking to a pharmacy could lose a foot before they have even reached the end of the road.
So the morning walk to buy bread is not really a walk. It is closer to a military patrol without the equipment, training or protection.
Eyes down for mines. Eyes up for drones. Move quickly, but not so quickly that you miss something on the pavement. Stay close to walls. Avoid open ground. Do not linger at crossings. Do not wait at bus stops.
There is no morning rush in Kherson now. There is only survival movement.
7.15am: A house torn open
In the Korabelnyi district, one residential house was struck at around 7.15am.
A mortar shell tore through the building, splitting the structure nearly in half. The blast punched holes through the roof, shattered nearby windows and sent fragments into surrounding homes.
An elderly woman was inside when the strike hit. She survived, but suffered a concussion and blast injury. Neighbours found her emerging from the wreckage disoriented and in shock, barely able to understand what had happened.
Residents began clearing debris. They checked nearby buildings. They looked for anyone else who might have been inside.
No other casualties were reported, but in Kherson that does not make the incident feel like a near miss. It makes it feel like the first entry in the day’s tally.
9am: Daylight becomes the enemy
In many cities, daylight brings safety. In Kherson, it brings visibility.
For Russian drone operators across the Dnipro, clear skies mean better cameras, cleaner images and more targets. Civilians say the buzz of FPV drones can become relentless on bright days, turning the sky itself into a threat.
The only real relief comes from heavy rain or thick fog. Bad weather blinds cameras. It hides movement. It briefly silences the sky.
For Hope For Ukraine’s volunteers, the daylight hours are the most dangerous part of the day.
They bring food kits, fresh bread, water, medical supplies and solar energy equipment to residents who cannot leave. But every delivery is a race against the Russian surveillance chain above them.
A van cannot simply pull up and unload. First, the volunteers look for cover, usually a large tree with thick enough leaves to hide the vehicle from surveillance drones overhead.
Then the countdown begins.
Volunteers believe they may have 20 to 30 minutes before a spotted vehicle can be targeted. If a Russian surveillance drone sees them, it can pass coordinates to an FPV strike drone or artillery crew. Minutes later, the place where aid was being handed out may become a blast site.
So there are no orderly queues. No announcements. No crowd gathering around the van. Crowds get people killed.
Supplies are handed over quickly. Residents disperse immediately. The volunteers move on.
The cruelest part is that the act of helping can itself create danger. Aid workers know their vehicles may attract Russian attention. They know stopping too long could bring fire onto the same people they are trying to keep alive.
Humanitarian work in Kherson has become logistics under surveillance, with the sky watching every mistake.
Late morning: The streets are empty because the streets are hunted
By late morning, the most exposed parts of the city can look abandoned.
Major roads, intersections and bus stops are avoided because they are easy to see from the air and have repeatedly been targeted. The Korabelnyi district, close to the Dnipro and under constant drone pressure, has become one of the most dangerous parts of the city.
Volunteers describe it as a ghost town.
Windows are boarded with plywood to limit shrapnel injuries. Homes and apartment blocks that once held ordinary family life now appear sealed, hardened and half-deserted.
During daylight, residents do not wander. They do not gather. They do not sit outside. They do not take unnecessary journeys.
Anyone still in the area is usually underground.
Olena Naumova, another community leader who lives and works in Kherson, told LBC large parts of the city have become a “red zone”.
“Half of the city is an almost dead ‘red zone’, which the enemy batters daily with artillery, KABs and Shahed drones,” she said. “But the most terrifying thing is the drones.
“The number of drone attacks, a literal safari on humans, is increasing by the day.”
Describing a recent strike on a nearby bus stop in broad daylight, Ms Naumova said: “The house shook, shrapnel rang as it slammed into the walls, and I sat in the hallway and prayed.
“I prayed that it wouldn’t hit the house, or if it did, that I would go straight to God.
“I don’t want pain, mutilation or suffering. Better to go instantly.”
To British readers, it may be tempting to imagine this as a version of the Blitz, with civilians sheltering from bombs. But Kherson’s terror has a more intimate modern edge. The person operating the weapon may be watching the target in real time.
That is why locals and human rights groups have used the phrase “human safari”.
It means civilians are not only being hit by inaccurate fire. They are being stalked.
A pedestrian. A motorcyclist. A car. A bus stop. An aid vehicle. A person stepping out to buy medicine.
All can become targets.
Midday: A city where even leaving the house requires armour
Those with access to protective equipment put on helmets and bulletproof vests to leave home for basic errands.
That sentence should feel absurd. It should feel like something from a dystopian screenplay written by someone trying too hard. In Kherson though, it is practical advice.
Most residents cannot afford body armour. They move instead from tree to tree, doorway to doorway, wall to wall.
They avoid standing in the open. They avoid predictable routes. They avoid anything that might make them visible for too long.
There is a constant mental calculation: how long to cross this road, whether the buzzing is getting closer, whether that shape in the sky is a bird or a drone, whether the object on the ground is debris or a mine.
Every trip outside takes courage, not because the person leaving is a soldier, but because they are not.
They are pensioners, parents, shop workers, the sick, the poor and the stubborn. They are people trying to keep living in a city that Russian forces appear determined to make unliveable.
3pm: The basement city retreats again
By mid-afternoon, the city draws back underground.
Basements, shelters and cellars become kitchens, bedrooms, classrooms and sitting rooms. They are packed with mattresses, battery lights, stored water, improvised cooking equipment and the possessions people could carry below.
Life continues there, but as a shadow version of itself.
People charge phones when they can. They cook when power is available. They share updates about strikes, drone activity and safe routes. Children study underground because above ground is too dangerous. Elderly residents wait for volunteers because they cannot risk the streets themselves.
The city’s power grid has been repeatedly damaged by bombardment, making energy independence a matter of survival.
Hope For Ukraine says its solar energy resilience programme is designed for families living through blackouts caused by attacks on energy infrastructure, providing systems that allow homes to keep lights on, phones charged and basic equipment functioning when the grid fails.
In Kherson, those kits are lifelines for residents.
A charged phone can mean a warning, a call for help, proof someone is still alive.
A cooker can mean a hot meal without risking a walk through drone-covered streets.
A generator can mean a basement remains a shelter rather than a dark hole beneath a ruined city.
5pm: Why people stay
The obvious question, from a safe distance, is why anyone remains.
The answer is that war removes easy choices.
Some people are too elderly or too ill to leave. Some cannot afford to start again somewhere else. Some have already lost so much that leaving the city would mean losing the last thing they still recognise as theirs.
Others know safer parts of Ukraine are already crowded with internally displaced people. Leaving Kherson could mean becoming homeless in another city, with no money, no support network and no guarantee of shelter.
Hope For Ukraine says its wider refugee programme supports Ukrainians displaced by the war, including through a refugee centre in Lviv and assistance for refugees in Europe and the United States. But for many people in Kherson, the decision to leave remains painfully complicated.
For many residents, the choice is not between danger and safety. It is between the known danger of their basement and the unknown danger of displacement.
So they stay.
Not because they are reckless. Not because they do not understand the risk. They understand it better than anyone.
They stay because Kherson is home.
6pm: The sky changes, but the danger does not
As evening falls, the drone threat does not disappear. But the character of the danger changes.
Darkness can make drone operations harder, but night brings heavier bombardment. Artillery, missiles and larger strikes become the dominant fear.
Residents shelter underground as blasts shake the city above them. The flight times from nearby launch areas can be so short that people may hear the boom or feel the impact before warnings can offer meaningful protection.
There is no true rest. Only phases of danger.
Daylight brings drones. Night brings heavier fire.
The mind adapts because it has to. A person can become used to almost anything, which is one of humanity’s less charming survival features.
But Hope For Ukraine’s volunteers say the psychological toll is visible everywhere. People are exhausted, frightened and trapped. They speak of invisible danger from the sky, of streets they no longer recognise, of the humiliation of needing armour to buy food, of the loneliness of living beneath their own city.
Night: Waiting for the next impact
In the basements, night is long.
People sleep in fragments. They wake to explosions. They listen for damage nearby. They wait for messages. They check on neighbours. They count the hours until daylight and understand that daylight brings its own dangers.
Somewhere above, another house may be hit. Another road may be mined. Another drone may search for movement.
For the volunteers, the work continues with the knowledge that tomorrow will demand the same risks again: finding cover, unloading fast, avoiding drones, driving at terrifying speed through battered streets, and trying not to bring danger to those they are helping.
Russian drones have reportedly locked onto and followed aid vehicles. Hope For Ukraine says its drivers have been forced to race through the city at around 110km/h to escape explosive FPVs.
It is an obscene inversion of humanitarian work: aid delivered not just under fire, but under pursuit.
Megan Gittoes, an adviser to the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, told LBC that life in Kherson shows how Russia is using fear itself as a weapon against civilians.
“The so-called ‘human safari’ is one of the most insidious elements of the war in Ukraine,” she said.
“The aim is to make every ordinary act feel fatal, and to terrorise people into hiding, isolation and exhaustion.
“Life in Kherson shows how Russia is prepared to inflict a campaign of psychological torture on innocent civilians.
“That Russia appears to feel able to do this so openly is a damning indictment of an international community that has allowed it to act with impunity.”
5am: Another day begins with another attack
Then morning comes again.
At around 5am, in Korabelnyi, a 68-year-old man was targeted and attacked by a drone.
The city starts listening once more.
A new 24 hours begins in the same way as the last: underground, cautious, afraid, alive.
Kherson is not simply being shelled. It is being watched, hunted and hollowed out by remote control.
The accounts from Hope For Ukraine show a city where normal civilian life has been compressed into basements and brief, dangerous movements above ground. The walk to a shop has become a tactical decision. A bus stop has become a target. A delivery van has become bait for drones. A clear blue sky has become something to fear.
For those watching from Britain, the war in Ukraine can sometimes appear flattened into maps, frontlines and diplomatic language. Kherson is the human reality behind those abstractions.
It is a city where people still need bread, medicine, electricity, water and human contact, but where every act of ordinary life can draw fire from the sky.
The people who remain are not statistics. They are civilians trying to survive the next errand, the next hour, the next night.
And in Kherson, even that has become an act of defiance.
