Six killed as Russian drone hits park in NE Ukraine

Six people, including young children, were killed when a Russian drone struck a park in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region on Monday, the authorities said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried a “pure atrocity”, saying on Facebook the drone “struck people directly – in a park near an ordinary cafe”.

Among them was a one-year-old girl named Angelina, he wrote, reposting a picture of a young girl in a snowsuit, strapped into a stroller, her blurred head tilted to one side.

The strike in the central park in Nova Vodolaga in the northeastern Kharkiv region had also killed the girl’s mother.

The town, near the front lines, counted some 10,000 inhabitants before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram thatthe dead in the attack in Nova Vodolaga included two children, revising down an earlier toll of three children killed, and added that 15 others were wounded.

Seven of those injured were children, he added.

In an earlier post on Telegram, Synegubov decried “another terrorist act by the Russian Federation”.

“The enemy strikes a recreational park in the middle of the day, knowing that there is no military infrastructure there at all,” he said.

Kharkiv regional police also posted pictures on Telegram showing a burnt-out stroller, damaged playground equipment and a collapsing wooden structure.

Zelensky meanwhile repeated his call for Kyiv’s allies to provide his country with more air defence capabilities amid rising tensions with US President Donald Trump.

“We ask that sanctions on Russia stay in place as long as the killings continue. We ask America to be strong,” said Zelensky, who had already criticised Washington’s decision to lift some sanctions on Moscow.

He also called on Europe to “continue its support” as the EU struggles to find the funds needed to cover Ukraine’s swelling budget deficit.

Local authorities in the Russian-occupied eastern Lugansk region meanwhile said that three people there were killed when a Ukrainian strike hit a hearse on Monday.

A Ukrainian strike “targeted a funeral home vehicle that was transporting a deceased person. This attack claimed the lives of three people”, Leonid Pasechnik, the regional leader installed by Moscow, said on Telegram.