Ukraine: Russian drone kills father and 3 children, pregnant mother badly hurt

A Russian drone strike overnight on a residential home in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region killed a man and his three young children, leaving their heavily pregnant mother critically injured, officials said on Wednesday, 11 February.

According to regional authorities, the attack reduced the house to rubble and sparked a fire, trapping members of the family beneath the debris. The Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office said the 34-year-old father and the couple’s children — twin boys aged two and their one-year-old sister — died in the blast, while emergency responders managed to extract the mother alive.

Prosecutors said the woman, who is 35 weeks pregnant, suffered extensive blast trauma, a brain injury, burns and hearing damage. She remains in serious condition in hospital.

The incident comes nearly four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, during which Ukrainian civilians have continued to face regular aerial bombardments despite renewed diplomatic pushes over the past year led by the United States to halt hostilities.

Data from the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission indicated that last year proved the deadliest for civilians since 2022, as Russian strikes intensified in areas beyond the frontline. The mission reported that in 2025 alone the conflict caused 2,514 civilian deaths and left 12,142 injured — a rise of 31 per cent compared with the previous year.

Authorities identified the drone used in the Kharkiv attack as a Geran-2, a Russian variant of the Iranian-designed Shahed loitering munition. The strike hit the town of Bohodukhiv, which had around 15,000 residents before the war and lies roughly 22 km from the Russian border.

Bohodukhiv mayor Volodymyr Bielyi expressed grief over the tragedy in a message posted on Facebook. “We lost what is most precious — our future,” he wrote. “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.”

He added that the woman remains in critical condition and announced three days of mourning, during which flags would be lowered and public celebrations suspended. “We will endure. We will remember. We will never forgive this horror on our land,” Bielyi wrote.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strike underscored the fragility of diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war. “Each such Russian strike undermines trust in everything being done through diplomacy to end this war, and again 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.

Ukraine’s Air Force reported that Russia launched 129 long-range drones toward the country overnight.

In a reciprocal escalation, Russian authorities said a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a blaze at an industrial facility in Volgograd. Regional governor Andrei Bocharov reported that falling drone debris also damaged a residential building, while aviation officials temporarily halted operations at eight Russian airports due to the threat posed by the attacks.

The overnight exchanges reflected the continuing cycle of strikes on civilian and infrastructure targets on both sides, underscoring the persistence of hostilities even as diplomatic initiatives struggle to secure lasting de-escalation.

With AP/PTI inputs