Russia drops lethal flower petal mines in ongoing terror against civilians in Kherson
Ukrainian police mine disposal experts have defused several ‘flower petal landmines’ from a street in Kherson and warn the public to be especially vigilant of this latest insidious weapon scattered remotely by the Russians. The landmines are tiny, and since they are coloured green or brown, are perilously hard to detect on the ground. It takes only a person to stand on one and it will explode.
These are, supposedly, ‘anti-personnel landmines, yet the mines reported on 26 August were found on a street in Kherson, meaning that they were clearly targeting civilians. The police statement that Russia is terrorizing civilians in Kherson and Kherson oblast through such landmines, drones and other weapons, is no hyperbole and coincides with, among others, the findings of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine
Kherson is not the only Ukrainian city which the Armed Forces have liberated, but it was the only regional centre which the Russian invaders managed to seize, and its loss would have been galling for Moscow. The liberation of Kherson on 11 November 2022 and the evident euphoria with which residents greeted the Ukrainian defenders, aloo gave the lie to Russia’s claims that the fake ‘referendum’ run at gunpoint in late September 2022 had shown a vast majority in support of Russia’s annexation of their city and region. Russia is not only claiming to this day that all parts of Kherson oblast have become ‘Russian’ but has even put this in its revamped constitution. There may well be other motives for the savage attack on Kherson seen since 11 November 2022, but revenge for Moscow’s humiliation can surely not be excluded.
Attacks on Kherson began immediately after the city’s liberation. In the special report which the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine made public on 28 May 2025, the Commission found evidence that the huge number of drone attacks on civilians in Kherson and Kherson oblast since July 2024 was deliberate Russian state policy. As reported, the Commission concluded that the drone attacks were widespread; systematic and “conducted as part of a coordinated state policy”, with this constituting a crime against humanity.
The Commission also drew attention to the videos of such attacks on Russian Telegram channels, accompanied by warnings to get out. It further concluded that Russia’s deliberate state policy is aimed at driving Ukrainians from Kherson oblast and writes that “Russian armed forces may have committed the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population.”
Liudmyla Tiahnyriadno from the ZMINA Human Rights Centre recently wrote of the number of Kherson volunteers who have been killed by the Russians, Including Pavlo Matviyets, who was just 23: 42-year-old Iryna Bairachenko and 25-year-old Oleksandr Ivakhnenko, who was killed in a Russian attack while helping to boar up windows after previous attacks.
ZMINA quotes Pablo de Greiff, one of the three members of the UN Commission, in reporting that Russian drones killed almost 150 civilians and injured hundreds of others in attacks carried out in Kherson and 16 other populated areas from July 2024 to 26 May 2025.
Such deliberate attacks on civilians are both crimes against humanity of murder and war crimes. They demonstrate the Russians’ wish to instil terror in the civilian population, with this a grave violation of international humanitarian law. De Greiff also stressed that crimes against humanity are among the gravest of international crimes.
In their report, the Commission cited examples where Russia had targeted ambulances in double-tap drone strikes, i.e. when the ambulances were hurrying to help the victims of a first attack. A 45-year-old had, for example, been injured in November 2024 when a drone dropped explosives as he was riding a moped. Two explosives were dropped, minutes later, on the ambulance which arrived to treat his serious injuries. The Commission stressed that ambulances have special protection under international law and that some victims have died as a consequence of not being moved to a medical faculty in time because of Russia’s deliberate targeting of ambulances.
The Commission concluded that the Russian military have committed the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Kherson oblast.
The report, in short, could not have been more hard-hitting, as have been the Commission’s earlier findings, reported here*. How much impact they have is, unfortunately, unclear, although ZMINA spoke with Oksana Pokalchuk, Co-Director of Truth Hounds, who was fairly upbeat. She believes that the reports can have an impact at international level, especially given Russian unwillingness to discuss the subject of war crimes which its soldiers are committing on Ukrainian territory.
“It’s painful for the Russians to listen to the subject of their crimes being raised at international level, not to mention the fact that they must also answer for them. Therefore, such reports do work, although it is not a swift process. For example, this UN Commission report is extremely important. We will see already this year how it is used within the UN system, and in Ukraine’s own advocacy at international level.”
Pokalchuk believes that Russia is using terror against the civilian population to reduce resistance, both in frontline places and in territory currently under Russian occupation. She also notes that it has been clear since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that the Russians hate activists and, in general, people with an active civic position. As soon as the Russians invaded a village or town, it was such people that they would hunt down and hurl into basements. They literally had lists of such people, she adds.
“The social setup in Russia is such that there is a whole grey mass; oligarchs; enforcement bodies; the army and ‘the Tsar’. Ukraine is organized differently. Our society is built according to a different logic. When they see people who protest, who argue, who have their own values, it brings out additional aggression in them. As well as this aggression, there is also simply a plan. Terror in order to wear us all down, in order to crush our will”.
Russia’s enforced disappearances of Ukrainian civilians are crimes against humanity – UN Commission