A Russian drone struck 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, the head of the Kharkiv regional government. he said on Wednesday.

Local government he said in a social media post that Grygoriy Shykula was killed along with his two-year-old twins and their one-year-old sister. Their mother, who is 35 weeks pregnant, remains in critical condition.

A drone completely destroyed a house in the town of Bohodukhiv, trapping a family under the rubble. The ambulance managed to save the mother from the ruins. She suffered blast injuries, burns and a traumatic brain injury, according to regional prosecutors.

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

“The Russians once again attacked the private sector of Bohoduhiv with an attack drone. The strike hit a residential building that was completely destroyed,” the State Emergency Service of Ukraine announced in a post shared on Telegram messaging application.

Russia hit Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure during its all-out invasion of the neighboring country, 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 protect civilians.

According to analysis by As an Institute in Germany, total foreign military aid to Ukraine decreased by 15% in 2025.

“Each such Russian coup undermines the credibility of all diplomatic efforts to end this war and proves again and again that strong 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 security for us, for Ukraine, is not guaranteed, everything else does 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 Zaporizhia, Ukrainian officials said.

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

That round of negotiations, in Abu Dhabi, brought the first prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia in five months and a vague agreement on the continuation of negotiations, but there is no visible progress in this regard the main obstacles to a broader peace agreement.

Zelenskyy he told reporters last week that the Trump administration had given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach an agreement to end the war, and said that Mr. Trump had warned that American pressure on both sides would increase if they did not.

“The Americans are proposing to the parties to end the war by the beginning of this summer, and they are likely to put pressure on the parties according to this schedule,” Zelenskyy said.

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