A Russian drone strike on Tuesday night decimated a young family, resulting in the deaths of a father and his three young children, with a pregnant mother being the only survivor.
Oleg Synegubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region, stated on Telegram that the assault on the town of Bohodukhiv took the lives of 34-year-old Grigory and his three children—2-year-old twin boys Ivan and Vladyslav, along with their 1-year-old sister Myroslava.
The family had recently fled from Zolochiv, a frontline town approximately 25 miles from the Russian border, aiming to avoid ongoing shelling.
They were spending their first night in their new residence when the strike happened, Synegubov noted.
Olga, the 35-year-old mother of the children, who is 35 weeks pregnant, survived with injuries and minor burns and was subsequently released from the hospital following medical treatment.
“The once again targeted an ordinary residential building in the middle of the night,” said Synegubov. “Another terrorist act of the state fighting against the civilian population – against small children, pregnant women, elderly people.”
The Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office reported that preliminary information suggests a “Geran-2” drone was employed in the attack.
The Geran-2 is the Russian name for the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, a one-way attack drone that explodes on impact and has been extensively utilized by Moscow to strike Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned in a post on X on Wednesday that Russian forces conducted further strikes across border and frontline regions, including the launch of 470 attack drones on Kherson in one day.
“Gas supply restoration is ongoing in the Donetsk region – also following a Russian strike. There were in the Dnipro region, in the Synelnykove district,” he wrote. “Some consumers are currently without electricity in Zaporizhzhia after ‘shahed’ strikes – restoration work is in progress.”
Zelenskyy stated that he instructed military and community leaders to devise additional measures to enhance the protection of critical infrastructure.