Video circulating on 7 July appears to show a Russian first-person-view drone operator deliberately striking and killing a great white pelican, a species classified as threatened. Several war-monitoring channels said the device was piloted by the Russian military, which published the footage online. The episode follows separate reports the same day of Russian drones menacing civilians in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region. Accounts showing a family harvesting watermelons fleeing an approaching drone said Ukrainian defenders shot the aircraft down before it could detonate.