Three Ukrainian toddlers, father, killed in Russian drone attack

Firefighters work at the site of a house hit by a Russian drone strike, in the town of Bogodukhiv in Kharkiv region, Ukraine in this handout picture released Wednesday.

A Russian drone strike on a house in northeastern Ukraine killed three toddlers and their father and wounded their pregnant mother, officials said Wednesday.

Twin boys aged one and a two-year-old girl were killed in the attack late Tuesday night on the family’s house in the city of Bogodukhiv, around 20 kilometres from the border with Russia.

It triggered an outpouring of anger and grief.

“This is deliberate terror against civilians, against families, against children. Russia is consciously killing our future,” said Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.

Local prosecutors said the family had been trapped inside after the attack. Video posted by the emergency services showed a bright red flame and grey smoke billowing over the collapsed roof of a house.

“As a result of the strike, the house was completely destroyed and caught fire, and the family was trapped under the rubble,” prosecutors said in a statement posted on Telegram.

The children’s mother, who is eight months pregnant, survived, but sustained “a traumatic brain injury, acoustic barotrauma, and thermal burns”, prosecutors said.

Their grandmother was also wounded in the attack and had been hospitalised, Bogodukhiv mayor Volodymyr Biely said in a statement.

The head of the Velyka Rogozianka community in Kharkiv, where the family is originally from, told AFP that they had only just moved to the town to be nearer to relatives several days earlier.

The killed father served in the Ukrainian army for several months, starting in spring 2024.

He was discharged after his leg was blown off by a mine, the official, Anatoliy Yeliseiev said.

He added that the couple had only formally registered their marriage last week.

The pregnant mother of the family was discharged from hospital later on Wednesday, he said.

“The shock has passed,” Yeliseiev told AFP, referring to her condition, adding: “I don’t know how she survived.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack showed Russia was not serious about ending the four-year war, unleashed by Moscow’s invasion in February 2022.

“Each such Russian strike undermines trust in everything being done diplomatically to end this war and, time and again, proves that only strong pressure on Russia and clear security guarantees for Ukraine are the real key to stopping the killings,” he said on social media.

He also said Russia had hit a hospital in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia in a separate drone attack.

Moscow denies targeting Ukrainian civilians, even as thousands have been killed since it invaded.

Under US pressure, the two sides have opened talks on trying to broker a deal to end the war.

But their positions appear far apart with Moscow demanding sweeping territorial and political concessions from Ukraine that Kyiv rejects as tantamount to capitulation.