Russian drone strike kills three small children and father in Ukraine

KYIV, Feb 11 (Reuters) – A Russian drone crashed into a house in eastern Ukraine, killing toddler twin boys, their baby sister and the children’s father, officials said on Wednesday, in a strike President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said undermined diplomacy as Washington presses for a peace deal.

Local prosecutors said the drone hit the residential building late on Tuesday in the town of Bohodukhiv, to the west of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.

“As a result of the strike, the house was completely destroyed and engulfed in flames, and the family was trapped under the rubble,” the Kharkiv Region Prosecutor’s Office said on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.

Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov described the victims as two boys aged two, a one-year-old girl and a 34-year-old man, and said the boys were twins called Ivan and Vladyslav, and their sister was called Myroslava.

The children’s pregnant mother was the sole survivor, officials said.

Syniehubov said the family had only just moved to the town to escape constant shelling and that it was their first night in the house. The mother was released from hospital after being treated for injuries and minor burns, he said.

Images posted on Telegram by Ukraine’s emergency service showed firefighters battling a blaze in a house, with smoke rising through the wooden beams of the roof.

There was no immediate comment from Russia on the attack. Moscow has denied intentionally targeting civilians during the war although its attacks have killed thousands of them since it invaded at full scale in February 2022. Ukraine has also hit civilian targets in Russia or Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine during the war, though on a far smaller scale.

ZELENSKIY SAYS STRIKES UNDERMINE TRUST

“Each such Russian strike undermines trust in everything being done diplomatically to end this war,” Zelenskiy wrote on social media, calling for pressure on Russia and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have met Russian officials under U.S. mediation in Abu Dhabi in the latest U.S. push to end the war. Zelenskiy has said U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration wants a solution on how to end the war before the summer.

“The Russian army is not preparing to stop; they are preparing to continue fighting. And the only thing that really works to protect life is our strength, which means support and strengthening of Ukraine must continue,” Zelenskiy wrote.

He also referred to an overnight drone attack in the neighbouring Sumy region, which he said killed one person and injured six including children, and a drone attack on a hospital in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 129 drones at Ukraine overnight, of which 112 were shot down or neutralised.

Kharkiv, about 30 km (20 miles) from the border with Russia, and the surrounding region have repeatedly been attacked.

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk, additional reporting by Ron Popeski, Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Peter Graff and Timothy Heritage)