KHERSON — A Russian drone attack on May 3, 2024, struck a Kherson municipal transport van carrying bus driver Eduard Zadorozhny and colleagues, killing an engineer and leaving Zadorozhny concussed. The strike followed a pattern of repeated assaults on public transport in the Ukrainian city, which remains under Ukrainian control but faces continuous attacks from Russian forces across the Dnipro River.
"They hit us, we got out, and when an ambulance arrived to help us, they hit the ambulance," Zadorozhny said. "What they do is hit you, and then they hit you again. They've turned people's lives into a horror show," he added.
According to the Kherson municipal transport company, Russian drone attacks on public transport began in 2023 and have intensified in 2024. The company reported that three of its workers have been killed and eight wounded this year, with 21 trolleybuses and eight buses damaged. Local authorities stated that 27 buses in total—including six privately operated—have been bombed in 2024, resulting in three transport worker deaths.
Rita Dobrinova, a manager at the Kherson municipal transport company, described how Russian drones increasingly use optic fibre cables, which cannot be jammed by existing countermeasures. "Some are just hovering, waiting. Others are scout drones. They look the driver right in the eye through the windscreen," she said. Dobrinova also recalled a prior attack: "There is a bus driver who had a bomb dropped literally on to his head on 11 April. It went through the cabin's roof and fell on his head."
Bus drivers have been issued helmets, bullet-proof vests, and drone detectors called 'chuyka,' though these only detect drones using known navigation frequencies. Drivers are instructed to stop, evacuate passengers, and direct them to the nearest shelter when the device alerts. "I can't say each one of them will meet a drone every day. But the drone detector will beep once in an hour or an hour and a half. All it tells you is that there's a drone around. It will show your distance to it in metres or kilometres," Dobrinova said.
Maksym Dyak, a municipal bus driver, was hospitalized earlier in 2024 with a broken rib and shrapnel in his chest after a drone attack. "We work like rats in a cage. We get attacked from every side, but we keep driving," he said. Dyak added, "We need to get people to their pharmacies and hospitals: children and the elderly, everyone who has stayed here, everyone who still lives here. No-one apart from us will do this. We realise that if we abandon these people, no one else will drive them." He also said, "I never thought of leaving. This is where I was born, this is where I live and this is where I'll live until the very end. I'm not going anywhere."