Three young children and their father were killed and their pregnant mother was injured in a Russian drone strike in eastern Ukraine, local emergency services said.
Kharkov region governor Oleg Sinegubov said the family had fled the shelling and arrived in the town of Bokhodukiv, about 60 kilometers west of Kharkov, just the day before.
“(They) had just evacuated from Zolotiv and were trying to escape constant shelling and find a safer place to live. It was their first night in a new place,” he said on Telegram.
Later on Wednesday, Zolotiv authorities announced further attacks on the village, including a drone attack that injured two teenagers.
Sinegubov named the victims as two-year-old twin boys Ivan and Vladislav, their one-year-old sister Miroslava, and their 34-year-old father Grihori. Earlier on Wednesday, authorities said Miroslava was the eldest of three children, but the confusion may have been caused by the fact that the family was new to the area.
The town’s mayor, Volodymyr Bely, called the strike an “inhuman crime.”
“We lost the most precious thing we had: our future,” he said in a statement.
Police said the mother, who was 35 weeks pregnant, suffered head wounds and burns. Sineguboff said she has now been discharged from the hospital and also revealed the identity of another survivor, a 73-year-old man in the neighborhood. Police incorrectly identified this person as the children’s grandmother.
The house where the family lived was completely destroyed in the strike and subsequent fire. Photos from the scene show burnt debris, with charred toys clearly visible in what used to be the inside of the house.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the attack showed Russia was not serious about peace.
“Such attacks by Russia undermine confidence in everything that is being done diplomatically to end this war,” he said in a statement on Telegram.
Zelenskiy said Russia launched 129 attack drones into Ukraine overnight, hitting the Kharkov, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and Poltava regions.
Attacks continued during the day. Kharkiv oblast authorities said a woman was killed when a drone collided with a medical vehicle carrying five medical workers and five civilian passengers.
Andriy Sadovy, the mayor of the western Ukrainian city, announced that Russia also launched two ballistic missiles towards Lviv on Wednesday afternoon. He said Ukraine had succeeded in “neutralizing” them, calling it a “monumental” mission.
