The future of murder

Murder is an age-old trait of the human condition, though how we do it is always evolving. The future of murder is science fiction becoming fact, right now.

A hobby goes lethal

We fondly remember the times when the drone was an exciting new toy that enabled beautiful aerial shots we could share on social media, ways for film crews to get exceptional footage without recourse to a cumbersome helicopter. 

But today, they are used by psychopaths to murder civilians in a “human safari” in a warzone, by cartels to take out competitors and adversaries, and by the Russian mafia to eliminate barriers to entry in a nefarious market.

With AI and technological development proceeding at light speed, we are a hair’s breadth away from plug-and-play autonomous assassination.

Beta testing a new murder method

In summer of 2024, the liberated southern Ukrainian city of Kherson became a testing ground for this new method of murder. Kherson is situated on the Dnipro River, the frontline separating the two warring sides. Drone pilots of various units of the Russian Armed Forces began using first-person-view (FPV) and Chinese-manufactured Mavic-3 drones to stalk and pick off civilians living in communities along the riverbank. 

In the process, Kherson has gradually become a hellscape in which citizens run the gauntlet on a daily basis to get anywhere. Russian forces seek to depopulate the city and its suburbs in order to stage an amphibious river-crossing to recapture the city and reoccupy the surrounding oblast (region), now constitutionally claimed as part of the Russian Federation by Vladimir Putin. 

As of February 14, Russian drone pilots had murdered at least 84 non-combatants and wounded another 942 just within the district of Kherson Raion. In contrast, all other forms of shelling, bombing, multiple-rocket launcher strikes, and missile fire combined killed 84 and wounded 697 more non-combatants.

Drones are killing more civilians than shells are killing soldiers. This is industrial-scale murder.

Kherson finds itself in a rather unique situation geographically. The Dnipro River serves as a moat, preventing Russian Armed Forces from advancing on the city directly. This is especially true now that both the Antonivka Bridge and Kakhovka Dam have been destroyed by Russian forces, making the river the only point of access for the Russians. This led to Russian forces relying mainly on artillery to conduct operations against Ukrainian forces and civilians on the other side of the river. But Russia is struggling to keep its artillery functional, with increasingly problematic ammunition from North Korean stocks hampering Russian fire missions. All the while, Ukrainian forces are conducting drone campaigns against these Russian artillery assets. The solution for the Russian forces in the Kherson direction has been to rely upon much cheaper and more precise drones to target the civilian population, first responders, and all forms of transportation within the city.

Indeed — and this is from personal observation back in February 2024 — military personnel are scarce inside the city confines, as there is little practical need for them to be there. This adds to the evidence that these strikes are purposefully targeting civilians.

Crowdfunding murder

Many of these Russian artillery units were already using drones to spot targets for artillery barrages. The addition of a couple of improvised explosive devices on the undercarriage of the popular Chinese-made Mavic-3 drones made for an easy transition from imprecise and indiscriminate artillery shelling to targeted murder. These attacks are now called “skids” or “skid-drops” by locals in the city, one of many new terms created by people thrown into an unprecedented way of life, enduring horrors many considered reserved for the fiction of sci-fi apocalypse novels.

The modus operandi of the drone pilots is typically to use Mavic-3 drones to stalk civilian cars, public transportation, cyclists, and random pedestrians, and then to release a variety of improvised explosive devices upon their victims. The Russian drone operators and teams often post the video captured of each of these attacks on their own social media pages, complete with propaganda soundtracks, in order to raise funds for the murderers responsible.

These murders essentially become fundraisers for more murders.

It is a despicable cycle of crowdfunded violence.

The attacks are sometimes random, targeting whoever is on the street in a so-called “Red Zone” stretching across the city of Kherson. Other attacks in the city, such as a September 2nd strike that killed a 62-year-old oncologist and wounded his wife, are deliberate, guided by targeting information provided by pro-Russian collaborators hiding among the Ukrainian population.

The most infamous source of these heinous crimes is a Russian milblogger (military blogger) named Osvedomitell Alex. This yet-to-be-identified Russian soldier serves as a major funnel for Russian drone operators to release video evidence of their attempts at murdering Ukrainian civilians. He releases footage to a rabid audience of 47,000 mostly Russian subscribers hungry for the latest war-porn. To amuse his domestic audience, in the caption under each video or photograph, Osvedomitell Alex spews his racist, sexist, and dehumanizing rhetoric, often tinged with a dark cynical sense of “humor.” The rhetoric of the murderers sometimes even ventures upon the outright genocidal. 

On September 19, the Russian milblogger shared a photo of a concrete bomb shelter installed within Kherson to protect the civilian population from the persistent artillery shelling and aerial bombing that characterized 2023 and early 2024. Below, the Russian soldier wrote, “A khokhol [a Russian slur for Ukrainians] wouldn’t be a khokhol if he didn’t cheat. And even on the bomb shelter there is an advertisement for an online casino. They are simply created for experiments.”

Death at industrial scale

Beginning in December of 2024, drone attacks became the primary cause of civilian casualties in Kherson Oblast. But it wasn't until February 2025 that drone attacks became as deadly as the collective bombing and shelling. Russian drone attacks on civilians are thankfully not usually deadly, as 93% of victims survive, but they are often horrifically injured with limb amputations and shrapnel buried in their bodies.

According to recent weekly reports from Kherson Oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin, Russian forces are attacking locations in Kherson Oblast anywhere from 1300 to 1900 times a week via first-person-view and Mavic-3 drones. Just try to visualize that frequency! Of these strikes, 400 to 800 attacks happen every week within the Kherson Urban administrative area. Since at least the second week of December 2024, drone strikes average two to four times the number of casualties sustained by all other strikes combined.

Again, industrial-scale assassination.

Some of the deadliest strikes are those on public transportation because of the potential to create mass casualty events. Starting in July 2024, strikes on buses and vans became a popular target for Russian forces.

To give an understanding of the frequency of such attacks, let us refer to the work of Andrew Perpetua, an open-source intelligence analyst. He and his team (at the Ukraine Daily Update Map, to which author of this piece Brendan Kelley contributes) geolocated fourteen such attacks between 26 August 2024 and 09 January 2025. Kherson officials reported an additional seven strikes on buses, which could not be geolocated by Perpetua’s team of geolocators and experts.

Osvedomitell Alex often posts stories of public transportation being used by both military and civilians. Sometimes, he crafts elaborate stories about the soldiers supposedly using the buses to travel around the city and leaving behind ammunition that then detonates and causes casualties. These stories seek to obfuscate and sow doubt in the Ukrainian reports of bus strikes with significant civilian casualties. Typical targets are “marshrutkas” (mini-buses), city buses, bus stops, bus yards, gas stations, various 18-wheelers, and a variety of smaller Sprinter-type vans.

According to data collected from Kherson officials, in January 2025 alone, Russian forces murdered or attempted to murder 231 Ukrainian non-combatants. In total, 28 were killed, and another 203 were wounded. Of those victims, Russian drone attacks killed 20 and wounded 132 civilians, while all forms of shelling and bombing combined only killed 8 and wounded 71 civilians. 

This cheap method of murderous terror is by far the most prevalent way in which Russian war criminals seek to conduct their genocidal war of extermination.

A 'guided missile for the poor'

This macabre application is not confined to the war in Ukraine. Back in 2021, criminals from a drug cartel in Mexico used drones to drop explosives on the police, injuring two officers. Other rigged drones had previously been found in a cartel car.

Drones are increasingly being used by cartels to smuggle drugs, carry out surveillance, and fight against other cartels for control over territory. 

Just as we have seen in the war in Ukraine, drones are very low-cost, extremely accessible, and are particularly versatile tools that can be used in a variety of different contexts. 

These machines became such an issue that in 2023, organizations and people from 67 communities appealed to the then-president of Mexico for protection. And just as we see in the war zone on the other side of the world, anti-drone technologies such as jammers and detection systems, as well as artificial intelligence, are being used in the cat-and-mouse games of drone and counter-drone use.

Drones are a problem for cartels and gangs, but also security services and civilians alike.

Indeed, back in August 2024, the Mexican army acknowledged for the first time that some of its soldiers had been killed by bomb-dropping drones operated by these cartels.

Back in the Russian Federation, the Mafia had been keeping a close eye on the war over its borders as well as on activities in Mexico. Recently, a businessman in the Transbaikalia region was murdered using an FPV drone equipped with explosives.

FPV drones are simple in construction, costing just a few hundred dollars, which is negligible for criminal groups. Essentially, they require only a frame, a control system, antennas (not necessarily), electric motors with rotors, batteries, and a camera. You can attach anything that explodes to such a drone, effectively creating what one might call a "guided missile for the poor."

While many are calling this an evolution of the use of drones in Ukraine, Mexico appeared to have got there first. Perhaps this is an example of convergent evolution.

Even if the drones are not responsible for the deaths directly, they can be used for surveillance, as was reported in the Jerusalem Post in 2022 by criminals who watched their victim for an hour with the drone before eventually murdering him. Police have been investigating whether a series of assassinations over a number of months there have been carried out with the assistance of drones.

It has got to the point in this part of Israel that criminal targets have apparently moved into luxury high-rise towers in an attempt to escape the scrutiny and danger of these machines, since some of these drones have had pipe bombs or high explosive grenades attached to them.

Criminals are nothing if not people of morally dubious ingenuity. Where hydroponics have been a technological innovation in the growth of certain illegal crops, drones have become the new tool of murder and mayhem.

Where do we see this going? Outside of purely military application, we can see that lethality on an individual level is being facilitated. Anyone who might want to use surveillance or cause death now has another tool in their toolbox. Whether they be a lone wolf, a terrorist group, a cartel or the Mafia or some other criminal organization, or a nation-state, death from above to the victim down below has become painfully easy.

These birds of prey are becoming quicker, smaller, faster, and deadlier. And a damned sight cheaper.