Russian drone attack kills a father and 3 children in Ukraine while pregnant mother survives

KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian drone smashed into a home in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region overnight, killing a father and his three small children, officials said Wednesday. The family's pregnant mother was wounded but survived.

The strike completely destroyed the brick house and set it on fire, trapping the family under the rubble, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor's office.

The 34-year-old father and his three children — 2-year-old twin boys and their 1-year-old sister — were killed, while rescue workers pulled out the mother alive, prosecutors said.

During the almost four years since Russia launched all-out war on 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 2,514 civilians and wounded 12,142 in Ukraine in 2025 — 31% higher than in 2024, it said.

Mother survives

''We lost what is most precious — our future,'' Bohodukhiv mayor Volodymyr Bielyi 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.''

The family was made up of two twin brothers named Ivan and Vladyslav, their sister Myroslava, and father Hryhorii, said Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.

He said that the mother, Olha, had slight burns and other injuries and was later released from hospital. She was 35 weeks pregnant when the attack happened.

It wasn't immediately known if the mother's unborn baby survived, or why the prosecutor's office had earlier reported that she was severely injured.

Syniehubov said the family had recently evacuated from another town in the region.

Bielyi, the mayor, announced three days of mourning, when national flags will be lowered and all entertainment and organized public events will be canceled.

''We will endure. We will remember. We will never forgive this horror on our land,'' Bielyi wrote.

Bohodukhiv had a prewar population of 15,000. It is located some 22 kilometers (13 miles) from the Russian border.

Public records show no Ukrainian military infrastructure near the house.

Zelenskyy says diplomacy undermined

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.

Two people were killed and nine other wounded, including two children, in a series of drone attacks across the northern Sumy region, authorities said Wednesday. Another five people were reported wounded in an attack on a residential area in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to officials there, and six were wounded in the Kherson region.

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 short-handed against Russia's bigger army, though Moscow's forces have made only creeping progress in their full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022.

Zelenskyy has also pressed Western partners to provide more sophisticated air defense systems and missiles to help defend Ukraine.

Ukraine's foreign military aid falls

Military aid sent to Kyiv dropped by 13% last year compared with the annual average between 2022 and 2024, as U.S. President Donald Trump stopped sending American weapons, according to Germany's Kiel Institute, which tracks such support.

However, European countries have taken up much of the slack, increasing their military aid by 67% compared with the 2022-2024 period, the institute said in a report Wednesday.

Foreign humanitarian and financial aid to Ukraine fell by 5% last year in comparison with the previous three years, it said.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an industrial plant in the city of Volgograd, authorities said. Volgograd regional Gov. Andrei Bocharov said that drone fragments also damaged an apartment building.

Eight Russian airports briefly suspended flights overnight because of drone attacks, officials said.

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