Drone footage has shown the carnage left after a Russian assault group tried to force its way into the centre of the besieged Donetsk oblast city of Pokrovsk. The footage shows three bodies of civilians, one shot dead while riding her bike and two men, one killed as he moved along the road, unaware that he was walking towards the assault group. The video also recorded the huge courage shown by a man who risked his own life to carry a fourth civilian, too badly injured to walk, in the direction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ position. The situation in Pokrovsk is too dangerous for a vehicle to get through to evacuate the woman.
The video footage was posted on 19 October by Denys Khrystov, a Ukrainian TV presenter and volunteer. He explained that he had been given it by a Ukrainian defender and was making it public in case people recognized any of those on the video. Underneath the posted video, a person appears to have reported that the man seen carrying the wounded woman is Oleksiy Tanasiychuk, who was in the same year of studies with them.
The Russians have been trying to gain control of Pokrovsk for a very long time, with an increasing number of assault groups recently sent in to try to gain a foothold in the devastated city. In this case, they had tried to get into the area around the railway station, before being killed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. By then, however, they had shot and wounded one woman, and killed three others. The woman riding a bike was shot in the back and an older man’ body is seen lying near the wounded woman.
In his commentary, Khrystos says that he constantly asks himself why they (clearly the Russian invaders) do such things and suggests that it is simply “because they can afford to, that they won’t get into any trouble for it”. Russian propaganda will whip in, denying any involvement, turning everything on its head. “These killers have already been punished, but others will come and continue their crimes.”
Although there is not enough information from the video to know just how deliberately the civilians were targeted, it was evident after Bucha and other occupied parts of Kyiv oblast were liberated in early 2022 that the Russian invaders had gunned down civilians and left their bodies lying on the road.
It is not merely that the Russian perpetrators of such evident war crimes are not held to account. On many occasions, they have been rewarded. In April 2022, as more and more evidence emerged of the arbitrary killings; rape; torture; looting and other crimes committed under Russia’s occupation of parts of Kyiv oblast, Russian leader Vladimir Putin issued a decree ‘honouring’ the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, believed to be behind many of the atrocities. Putin’s decree claimed that the likely perpetrators had shown “mass heroism and daring, tenacity and courage.” He has since awarded or promoted other individuals, also believed to have committed such war crimes.
Numerous witnesses have also confirmed that Russian snipers would open fire on civilians in besieged Mariupol trying to get to one of the few outlets with drinking water.
The Russians are deliberately making it just as hard for civilians on the frontline to survive now. Ukraine’s National Police reported on 20 October that police officers and civilian volunteers had, under Russian fire, managed to evacuate six civilians from Dobropillya and Hryshyne (near Pokrovsk). The Russians had sent a drone to attack the evacuation vehicle, however it had, thankfully, been detected and shot down.
It is not only on the frontline that civilians are coming under attack. In June 2025, the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission reported that there had been a fifty percent increase in civilian deaths and injuries from Russian missile and drone attacks in the first five months of 2025 against the same period a year earlier. Less than a month earlier, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine had issued a special report, accusing Russia of crimes against humanity over its drone attacks against civilians in Kherson oblast. The report detailed drone attacks over the previous ten months targeting civilians, as well as ambulance workers targeted after they rushed to the scene of such attacks. It had concluded that such attacks are widespread, systematic and “conducted as part of a coordinated state policy.”
