Russian Drone Strike on a Park in Ukraine's Kharkiv Region Kills Six, Including Children

A Russian drone struck the central park of Nova Vodolaha, a town southwest of the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, on Monday afternoon, killing six people. Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said three of the dead were children, Reuters reported. Fifteen people were wounded, including seven children, the governor said, and emergency teams took the wounded to hospitals.

The drone hit at about 4:30 p.m. local time, while many people, including families with children, were in the park, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. He said the strike made no military sense. Vyhivskyi shared a blurred photo of a child in a stroller among the dead. Other pictures posted by officials showed emergency crews working around a damaged building near the park, and a nearby cafe was also damaged.

Zelensky calls the strike an absolute atrocity

President Volodymyr Zelensky shared photos from the park on X and called the strike an "absolute atrocity". He said a Shahed drone struck people directly, in a park near an ordinary cafe. Zelensky said a girl named Anhelina, a little over one year old and born in August 2025, was killed in her stroller, and that her mother Inna died later in hospital. Another girl was also killed, he said.

"These are horrific photos, but behind them lie shattered lives and the truth about this war. We must protect lives. Ukraine needs air defense," Zelensky said. He asked that sanctions against Russia not be lifted until the killings stop, and thanked the countries helping Ukraine shoot down drones and missiles.

Prosecutors open a war crime investigation

The Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office said that, on preliminary findings, Russian forces used a Geran-3 drone in the attack. Prosecutors have opened a pre-trial investigation into a possible war crime. Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said: "This cannot be treated as just another news story. The world must not get used to the killing of Ukrainian children and civilians."

Governor Syniehubov said Russian attacks on the city of Kharkiv and on 17 settlements across the region over the past day wounded 11 other people, separate from the park toll.

The same day, Trump says Russia has been fine

The strike was reported on the same day President Donald Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House that Russia has been "fine" on Ukraine and "haven't been doing much". Trump made the remarks while arguing that Zelensky should let somebody else negotiate an end to the war, and while blaming the Ukrainian leader for not settling it sooner.

United Nations human rights monitors say the civilian toll is climbing fast. They counted 328 civilians killed and 2,105 wounded across Ukraine in September, an 85 percent rise in casualties from the same month last year, the New York Post reported. In Kyiv alone, civilians were killed or wounded on 22 of September's 30 days, the highest count for any month since Russia began its full scale invasion in February 2022, according to the UN. Danielle Bell, who heads the UN monitoring mission in Ukraine, said the first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years.