Russia's FPV drone killed the last resident of Tokarivka Druha, a Kharkiv Oblast border village. The 57-year-old woman was walking along the road between the villages of Prudianka and Tsupivka when a Russian FPV drone struck her, Vyacheslav Zadorenko, head of the Derhachi City Military Administration, said. She had multiple shrapnel wounds and died in the hospital despite medics' efforts.

She worked at Derhachi Central Hospital.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has documented over 11,000 Russian FPV-drone attacks on civilians since 2024, with 2,010 recorded in just the first four months of 2026. The current pace will make 2026 exceed 2025's full-year total.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry ruled in May 2025 that Russia's drone hunting of Ukrainian civilians constitutes a crime against humanity, and extended that finding in fall 2025 across more than 300 kilometers of Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts. Investigators traced the command chain up to the Kremlin.

Kharkiv border zone has been depopulating for months

Kharkiv Oblast border zones are being systematically depopulated. Derhachi is a city in Kharkiv Oblast about 15 kilometers north of Kharkiv. Villages within the 10-kilometer strip along the Russian border have been targeted by artillery, guided bombs, and increasingly FPV drones. Tokarivka Druha now has zero residents.

Ukrainian prosecutors have classified the FPV-drone attacks on civilians as war crimes under international humanitarian law.

Zadorenko named her workplace and the empty village

"The deceased was a worker at Derhachi Central Hospital and the last and only remaining resident of the village of Tokarivka Druha, located in the 10-kilometer border zone. Sincere condolences to the family, loved ones, and colleagues of the deceased," Zadorenko wrote.

A pastor who prays with President Donald Trump says he had never heard of Russia's drone campaign against civilians in Kherson—until Euromaidan Press told him.

"I have not heard about this," said Pastor Mark Burns, one of Trump's closest spiritual advisers, when briefed this week on Russia's "human safari" against civilians in Kherson and the drone siege trapping thousands of people in the occupied region across the river. By the end of the conversation, he had pledged to raise it with the president, senators, and members of Congress from both parties.

The campaign Burns had not heard of has a UN crime-against-humanity finding, named suspects facing war-crimes charges, a draft US bill, and a bipartisan screening at the US Capitol behind it. A man who prays with the president learned of it this week, from a journalist.

What he didn't know

For more than a year, Russian forces have used first-person-view drones to hunt civilians in Kherson's streets—women walking to the store, cyclists, bus passengers, emergency responders, journalists, even animals. Human Rights Watch and the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine have concluded the attacks amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Across the river, 5,000 to 6,000 civilians remain trapped in occupied Oleshky, Hola Prystan, and nearby settlements, under what Ukraine has called a drone-controlled siege—mined roads, blocked aid, and no reliable food, medicine, or power. EP reported on the UN's findings in November. In September, the UN concluded the campaign amounts to a crime against humanity; the Security Service of Ukraine has since charged 10 operators from Russia's 404th Motorized Rifle Regiment with war crimes in absentia.

"Terrifying," he said in an interview with Euromaidan Press. "I did not know about this dire situation and that innocent people were being targeted in this human safari. It's becoming the new killing fields. That's what the Nazis used to do to the Jews. Russians are doing this now to the innocent people of Kherson."

He drew a line between combat and what he called deliberate attacks on civilians: "The fact that Russians are using drones to target innocent people—that is not war. These are war crimes. Targeting innocent people, children, and hospitals is against the Geneva Convention. They're attacking churches. They're attacking journalists. This is at the hands of Putin, a man who claims to be a Christian and claims to have moral authority. But yet the Russian Orthodox Church blesses missiles. They bless these drones that go out to kill innocent children, kill innocent people. And they're not trying to win a war. They are simply trying to terrorize the people. It's their mission. And that's what the world is starting to see."

He said he would raise it with US leadership—"the President, the Senators, the Congress, Democrats, and Republicans"—calling it something that "needs to be heard."

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A gap he says is closing—but wasn't closed for him

Burns argued that American public awareness of Russian disinformation is improving. "The veil of the Russian propaganda is breaking," he said. "It is falling. More and more people in America are seeing right through the Russian propaganda and lies."

He said this a few minutes after saying he had not heard of the Kherson campaign, which the UN documented months ago. Both statements are his.

Burns traced his own shift to a 2025 visit to Bucha and Irpin, where he said seeing the evidence firsthand changed his understanding of the war.

Where he says US support stands

Burns said the US does not trust Russia—"We're not friends with Russia"—and pointed to the Ukraine Support Act, which the House passed in June with more than $8 billion in military financing loans for Ukraine. "We just passed an $8 billion bill to support the war effort in Ukraine," he said. The bill has cleared the House; it still needs Senate approval and the president's signature before it becomes law.

He said Ukraine's fight serves European security broadly—"Ukraine is on the front lines for Europe"—and that US intelligence assessments he's aware of see Putin's ambitions extending past Ukraine: "He will continue to Georgia, Poland, Moldova, and the Balkan states in his attempt to reestablish the former USSR. He's using Ukraine as a test."

He described relations between Kyiv and Washington as improved since President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meeting with Trump at the G7, saying Trump "recently said that Ukraine is doing an amazing job" and "is winning the war."

What comes next

Burns said he would make the Kherson tragedy one of his rallying cries. "This is about spiritual diplomacy," he said. "And in the name of faith, that is my spiritual obligation as a man of God to do whatever it takes to promote peace and to promote the well-being of the innocent."

"I often say that Ukraine has the most powerful nation and the most powerful military in Europe," he added. "It is pushing back the full might of the Russian empire, the Russian Federation. 20,000–30,000 Russian soldiers are dying every month at the hands of the Ukrainians, and not because Ukrainians want war, but because they are defending their home."

Burns did not specify whether he meant killed or killed and wounded. Independent counts of Russian deaths run lower. Mediazona and the BBC's Russian service have confirmed more than 229,000 Russian soldiers killed by name as of late June 2026—a floor rather than a full toll, since the count includes only deaths verifiable through open sources. British intelligence has put the figure far higher: the head of GCHQ said in May that nearly 500,000 Russian troops had been killed since 2022. Ukraine's General Staff, which reports killed and wounded together, logs Russian losses at roughly 1,000 or more a day.

Burns said he plans to visit Ukraine as soon as August and is considering a trip to Kherson itself, "to let people know that the President has not forgotten."

Whether that follows through—and whether it changes anything in Washington—is untested. What's on record now is narrower and more specific: a pledge, made after being shown what he says he didn't know.

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A Russian strike killed two Norwegian People's Aid deminers and wounded four others in Kherson Oblast on 24 June, the group said. The team was clearing mines from Ukrainian farmland when the strike hit. Ukrainian prosecutors opened a war-crimes investigation.

Russia has turned Ukraine into the world's most mined country, contaminating tens of thousands of square kilometers of farmland that only a few thousand clearance workers can slowly make safe—work measured in decades, not years.

A strike at midday on a demining team

The strike hit at about 12:50 p.m. near the village of Novopetrivka, in the Vysokopillia community, Norwegian People's Aid said. One worker was killed at the scene, and a colleague taken to hospital later died of wounds. Four others were wounded, two in serious condition as doctors fought to save their lives.

The dead and wounded were all Ukrainian nationals, the group said. A 24-year-old demining specialist was among those killed, the head of Kherson Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported. The team had been clearing land of mines and unexploded ordnance, a basic condition for farmers to return to their fields and for displaced people to come home.

"Military authorities in Kherson report through Ukrainian media that Norwegian People's Aid was struck by a Russian Iskander‑M missile. The organization is still working to verify this information and the exact circumstances surrounding the attack," the organization wrote in its press release.

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A war-crimes case

Viktoriya Fedotova, head of the Ukrainian NGO Martin-Club and a partner of the demining team, wrote that the workers had taken no part in combat. They were clearing Ukrainian soil so civilians could be safe, she said, and her own team had trained alongside the dead only recently. Attacking those who save lives and make land safe is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, she added.

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A usual day of Russian strikes across the oblast

Across Kherson Oblast over the preceding 24 hours, Russian drones and artillery hit Kherson city and dozens of settlements, the regional administration reported. The strikes killed two people while wounding 16. 

By late afternoon on 24 June, prosecutors had logged one civilian killed and 11 wounded across the oblast from artillery, mortars, drones, and a ballistic strike. A drone hit a civilian fuel station around 5 p.m., seriously wounding two people.

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The strikes continued the next morning.

• On 25 June, prosecutors opened a fresh war-crimes case over drone attacks on a city hospital and a utility worker.
• Around 8 a.m., a drone strike on the Kherson hospital wounded five of its medical and technical staff.
• At 9:10 a.m., a drone wounded a 63-year-old utility worker in the Korabelnyi district, and just before 11 a.m. another strike hurt a 61-year-old man in the same district.
• A 62-year-old woman was hospitalized with blast and head injuries from a Shahed strike in the Central district the day before, and a 16-year-old boy needed care for a blast injury from another drone strike there.
• A 60-year-old woman and a man sought help after a drone hit their car between Bilozerka and Pryozerne.

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A pattern of strikes on those who help

UN investigators have previously ruled Russia's deliberate drone hunting of Kherson's civilians and rescuers a crime against humanity, tracing the campaign up the chain of command. Russian forces have hit humanitarian deminers before: in September 2025, a Russian missile killed two workers and wounded five from a Danish Refugee Council clearance team near Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine.