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.
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 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.
“It was their first night at the new place,” he said.
Bielyi, the mayor, announced three days of mourning, when national flags will be lowered and all entertainment and organized public events will be canceled.