Russian drone kills father and three children in Ukraine

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 on Wednesday. The strike completely destroyed the 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 US-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 UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country. The war killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in Ukraine in 2025 - 31 per cent 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.