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Five Russian Police Officers Killed in Drone Strike in Occupied Kherson Region
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Five Russian police officers were killed in a drone strike on a training ground in the occupied part of Kherson region.
According to the Telegram channel Dosye Shpyhuna on March 17, the strike on the training ground took place on February 28.
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The report said the strike targeted a firing range near the settlement of Lazurne, which is being used by occupation units of Russia’s Interior Ministry. At the time of the attack, personnel from the Russian-controlled Holoprystansky district police department were conducting live-fire training.
According to the channel, the first drone strike killed five officers, including a major who served as deputy head of the department, as well as several inspectors with the rank of lieutenant and senior lieutenant. Five other Russian personnel were reported injured.
About 30 minutes later the head of the same department, Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Shchehlov, arrived at the site, after which a second drone strike hit the training area, the channel reported. Shchehlov was seriously wounded, suffering shrapnel injuries to the abdomen and lower limbs.
The attack was later confirmed by Russia’s Interior Ministry on March 2.
The attack follows a series of Ukrainian drone strikes aimed at degrading Russian military infrastructure in the south. On March 6, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Brovdi, said Ukrainian drone units had carried out overnight strikes on several Russian air defense systems in occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
According to Brovdi, known by the callsign “Madyar,” the attacks targeted four elements of Russia’s air defense network, including a Buk surface-to-air missile system, an S-300V medium-range system, a Pantsir-S1 gun-missile air defense system, and a Tor short-range system.
The strikes were carried out by units of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, which have increasingly focused on weakening Russian air defense capabilities along the front line.
Brovdi said fighters from the 9th Battalion “Kairos” of the 414th Separate Brigade, also known as “Madyar’s Birds,” used a Ukrainian-made FP-2 strike drone with a 60-kilogram warhead to hit two of the targets.
Alongside its military campaign, Russia is pursuing long-term efforts to consolidate control over occupied territories. As part of these plans, Moscow aims to attract more than 113,000 people to the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions by 2045.
