The Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor initiated a war crimes investigation on 4 November after video footage emerged showing a Russian drone deliberately killing two civilians holding a white flag. This latest attack comes just days after the UN General Assembly heard a report identifying Russia’s systematic drone attacks on civilians as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The attack took place on 3 November near the village of Kruhliakivka (Kupiansk district of Kharkiv oblast). On the available footage, a drone can be seen clearly targeting a man riding his bike and holding a white flag. After killing him and his dog, a second drone was used to kill the woman who had been walking behind, after she approached the man’s body.
The investigation is under Article 438 § 2 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code (war crimes leading to the death of a person). The prosecutor stresses that there were no military targets anywhere in the vicinity and this was a clear attack on civilians hoping to be protected by their internationally recognized white flag. In fact, Russia has been demonstrating its contempt for international law since (at least) the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and has often bombed evidently civilian targets – residential buildings, playgrounds, nurseries, hospitals, etc. Children do not need to be holding white flags, and if you aim ballistic missiles at an apartment block or nursery, then they are very likely to be among the victims.
The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine first addressed Russia’s use of drone attacks on civilians in May 2025. Its report then specifically focused on drone attacks in Kherson oblast, and stated that Russia had, since July 2024, been using drones to drop explosives and kill civilians in Kherson oblast, as well as in double-tap strikes, where ambulance workers were targeted after they rushed to the scene of such attacks. There were compelling grounds, it concluded, for viewing such violations of international law as deliberate state policy and as crimes against humanity.
In its report, published on 27 October 2025 and presented to the UN’s General Assembly, the Commission further documents such attacks on civilian targets, with these over an area of 300 kilometres along the right bank of the Dnipro River, across Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv oblasts. The Commission members received testimony from residents who speak of being in danger at any time, and who are, therefore, forced to endure constant anxiety and mental pain.
Russia invariably denies any such charges, yet the evidence is overwhelming. The Commission writes that it examined around 500 videos of crimes, with the location of 247 of these technically verified. Denial is also senseless when Russian military units over a huge geographic area “under a centralized command, have used the same modus operandi to intentionally target civilians and civilian objects and cause harm and destruction.”
The Commission’s conclusions are essentially the same as those articulated in May 2025. It is already a war crime to deliberately target civilians, but Russia is also guilty of two crimes against humanity through its systematic and state-coordinated measures to drive out Ukrainian civilians from their place of residence. The drone attacks, the Commission concludes, amount to the crimes against humanity of murder and of forcible transfer of population. It further concluded that these attacks were committed as part of a coordinated policy to drive out civilians from those territories and amount to the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population. The attacks have spread terror among the civilian population and violated the human right to life and other fundamental human rights.
