Russian drone strike kills Ukrainian father and his three young children and seriously injures pregnant mother

A Russian drone attacked a house in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, killing a 34-year-old former Ukrainian soldier along with his three young children and seriously injuring his heavily pregnant wife, Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional government, said Wednesday.

The local administration said in a social media post that Grygoriy Shykula was killed along with his 2-year-old twins and 1-year-old sister. His mother, who is 35 weeks pregnant, was left in critical condition.

The drone completely destroyed the house in the town of Bohodukhiv, trapping the family under the rubble. Emergency services were able to rescue the mother from the rubble. According to regional prosecutors, he suffered explosion injuries, burns and head trauma.

The local Zolochiv village council said the father was a former member of the Ukrainian army and that the family had recently moved to Bohodukhiv, which is just 13 miles from the Russian border. The city, which before the war had a population of around 15,000, has faced constant Russian airstrikes in recent weeks.

“The Russians once again attacked the private sector of Bohodukhiv with an attack drone. The impact hit a residential building, which was completely destroyed,” Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said in a post shared on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia has attacked Ukrainian civilian infrastructure during its large-scale invasion of the neighboring nation, which began almost four years ago on February 24, 2022. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on Ukraine’s partners to provide increasingly sophisticated air defense systems to help protect civilians.

According to an analysis by the Kiel Institute in Germany, total foreign military aid to Ukraine fell by 15% in 2025.

“Each of these Russian attacks undermines the credibility of everything that is being done in diplomacy to end this war, and demonstrates again and again that tough pressure on Russia and clear security guarantees for Ukraine are the real key to ending the killings,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post Wednesday morning. “As long as the pressure on the aggressor is insufficient and as long as security for us, for Ukraine, is not guaranteed, everything else will not work.”

Russia launched 129 drones into Ukraine on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, killing at least five people and damaging key energy infrastructure around the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said.

The ongoing attacks come after a brief “energy truce” announced by President Trump in late January, as his administration prepared to mediate a second round of trilateral negotiations with Ukraine and Russia.

That round of talks, in Abu Dhabi, produced the first Prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia. in five months and a vague agreement to continue negotiating, but no apparent progress on the Major obstacles to a broader peace agreement.

zelensky he told reporters last week that the Trump administration had given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the war, and said Trump had warned that U.S. pressure on both sides would increase if they did not do so.

“The Americans propose that the parties end the war early this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule,” Zelenskyy said.

Meanwhile, Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an industrial plant in the Russian city of Volgograd on Wednesday, forcing eight Russian airports to briefly suspend flights.