A Russian drone strike targeting the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine has killed three people from the same family, including a teenage boy, a regional official announced Monday.
According to Oleh Hryhorov, the head of the regional military administration, the attack struck a residential home and claimed the lives of a 36-year-old man, his 13-year-old son, and a 73-year-old woman who was the mother of the man’s partner. The man’s partner and their 10-year-old son survived but were wounded in the attack.
Russia has relentlessly targeted civilian areas across Ukraine with drones and missiles since launching its full-scale invasion more than four years ago. The United Nations reports that more than 16,000 civilians have died in the conflict, and U.S.-led peace negotiations have so far been unable to halt the fighting.
The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reports that civilian casualties have been rising sharply in recent weeks as Russian forces struggle to make meaningful gains on the battlefield. In May alone, at least 274 civilians were killed and 1,763 were injured — the highest monthly death toll since April 2022. The monitoring mission noted that most of those casualties occurred in cities located far from the front lines.
In a separate overnight attack, a Russian drone strike on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed one woman and left three others injured, including an 11-year-old boy, according to regional head Ivan Fedorov.
Ukraine’s air force reported that Russia launched a total of 88 long-range attack drones and one ballistic missile overnight. Air defense systems managed to shoot down or electronically jam 79 of those drones.
Ukraine also launched a significant drone campaign of its own, with Russia’s Defense Ministry reporting that its forces intercepted 301 Ukrainian drones overnight across multiple Russian regions, the illegally annexed Crimea peninsula, and over the Azov and Black seas.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed that 84 Ukrainian drones aimed at the Russian capital were brought down. He did not address whether any damage occurred, but all four of Moscow’s airports temporarily suspended flights following the attack. Residential buildings in Russia’s Vladimir region, east of Moscow, and the Tula region to the south were also evacuated as a precaution, local Russian authorities reported.
