KYIV: A Russian drone smashed into a home in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region overnight, killing a father and his three small children and seriously wounding their mother who is 35 weeks pregnant, officials said Wednesday.
The strike completely destroyed the brick house and set it on fire, with the family trapped under the rubble, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office.
The 34-year-old father and his three children — twin boys aged 2 and their 1-year-old sister — were killed, while rescue workers pulled the mother alive from the rubble, prosecutors said. She sustained blast injuries, a traumatic brain injury, burns and hearing loss, they said.
During the almost four years since Russia invaded its neighbor, and despite a new push over the past year in U.S.-led peace efforts, Ukrainian civilians have endured constant aerial attacks.
Last year was the deadliest for civilians in Ukraine since 2022 as Russia intensified its aerial barrages behind the front line, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country.
The war killed 2,534 civilians and injured 12,142 in Ukraine in 2025 — 37% higher than in 2024, it said.
The drone that struck the Kharkiv town of Bohodukhiv was identified as a Geran-2, a Russian-made version of an Iranian Shahed drone.
“We lost what is most precious — our future,” Bohodukhiv mayor Volodymyr Bieliy wrote on his Facebook page. “There are no words to console the family; there is no prayer that could heal the heart of a mother who has lost her children.”
Bieliy said the mother is fighting for her life in hospital and announced three days of mourning, when national flags will be lowered and all entertainment and organized public events will be cancelled.
“We will endure. We will remember. We will never forgive this horror on our land,” Bieliy wrote.
Bohodukhiv had a pre-war population of 15,000. It is located some 22 kilometers (13 miles) from the Russian border. It wasn’t immediately clear whether there was any Ukrainian military infrastructure nearby the house.
“Each such Russian strike undermines trust in everything being done through diplomacy to end this war and again and again proves that only strong pressure on Russia and clear security guarantees for Ukraine are the real key to stopping the killings,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.
Ukraine has accused Russian forces of committing countless war crimes since the start of the war, and European institutions have made efforts to hold Russia accountable.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has multiple outstanding arrest warrants for Russian officials for war crimes. They include President Vladimir Putin, who is accused of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Zelenskyy said late Tuesday that Ukraine is making “many changes” in the way it fights Russia’s aerial attacks, especially with short-range air defenses. Training and replenishing new troops are also key issues, he said.
Ukraine has been shorthanded against Russia’s bigger army, though Moscow’s forces have made only creeping progress in their invasion.
Wide-scale desertions and 2 million draft-dodgers are among a raft of challenges for Ukraine. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last month.
