CHERNECHCHYNA: A Russian drone strike crashed on a village in Ukraine overnight, killing two small boys and their parents, including the mother who was pregnant with twins, Ukrainian authorities said.

In all, 65 drones targeted Ukraine overnight, the latest in daily barrages launched by Russia, with most of the projectiles shot down by air defences, Ukrainian officials said.

Tuesday’s strike hit a two-storey residential building in the village of Chernechchyna in the northeastern Sumy region, killing a couple and their sons, aged four and six, the head of the regional military administration, Oleg Grygorov, said.

The mother was pregnant with twins, the press service for the regional administration said.

“This is not the chaos of war but a deliberate choice: Russia strikes at homes, at children, at the very existence of our nation,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on social media.

A reporter on the ground saw the charred ruins of a two-storey building destroyed in the attack. A separate attack on the city of Dnipro on Tuesday killed one person and wounded 15, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the strike as “a brazen attack in broad daylight, targeting civilian infrastructure”.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2025