A Russian drone strike on Bohodukhiv kills a father, his three small children and injures their pregnant mother. The Office of the President of Ukraine reacts to the FT’s article suggesting that the U.S. pressures Ukraine to hold a vote by May 15. Ukraine is testing an own laser weapon system, media reports say.
Russian drone strike on Bohodukhiv kills a father, his three small children, injures their pregnant mother
A Russian drone crashed into a home in the city of Bohodukhiv in Kharkiv region overnight, killing a father and his three small children and seriously wounding their mother who is 35 weeks pregnant, officials said Wednesday.
The 34-year-old father and his three children — twin boys aged 1 and their 2-year-old sister — were killed, while rescue workers pulled the mother alive from the rubble, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
The 35-year-old mother sustained blast injuries, a traumatic brain injury and burns. She was taken to hospital and discharged later in the day, head of the regional military administration, Oleh Synehubov said. A 73-year-old neighbor had an acute stress reaction.
The family just moved into the city a few days ago from the town of Zolochiv that sits closer to the border, seeking safety.
Office of Ukraine’s President reacts to FT’s article suggesting U.S. pressures Ukraine to hold vote by May 15
It is unlikely that Ukraine will hold elections anytime soon as Russia continues to carry out attacks, including ones on civilians, an unnamed source in the Office of the President of Ukraine told Ukrinform news agency Wednesday. The comment comes on the heels of an article by the Financial Times (FT) published on Wednesday, saying that President Volodymyr Zelenskyi is planning elections in Ukraine and a vote on a peace deal with Russia.
Ukraine has begun planning presidential elections alongside a referendum on any peace deal with Russia, after the Trump administration has pressured Ukrainian leader to hold both votes by May 15 or risk losing security guarantees, the Financial Times said, citing Ukrainian and European officials involved in the planning.
“If the Russians kill every day, how can the elections be announced or seriously considered in the coming weeks? No one opposes the vote, but there should be security,” the source said.
According to the FT, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi intends to announce the plan for presidential elections and a referendum on February 24, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukraine testing own laser weapon system, media reports say
Ukraine is testing its own laser weapon system designed to shoot down Russian drones, Ukrainian military news site Militarnyi said Wednesday, referring to an article published by The Atlantic the day before. The paragraphs below are quoted from Militarnyi’s news piece.
Ukrainian engineers developed a new system, called Sunray, in response to a shortage of air defense missiles and the increasing number of large-scale kamikaze drone attacks.
The project took around two years to complete.
The Sunray can destroy small aerial targets by using a concentrated laser beam to burn through a drone’s body or disable its electronics.
According to the developers, the Sunray laser operates almost silently and does not require expendable ammunition.
The system is compact and can be mounted on a pickup truck or other light vehicles, enabling quick repositioning.
The cost of developing the Sunray prototype is estimated at several million dollars, while a production model is expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, significantly less than modern surface-to-air missile systems.
A shortage of traditional air defense systems drives the development of laser weapons in Ukraine.
Western partners are not always able to supply the necessary number of missiles, and using expensive interceptors against large numbers of cheap drones is considered economically inefficient.
Laser systems are considered a promising component of a layered air defense network, primarily for countering short-range kamikaze drones and reconnaissance UAVs.
The technology is still being refined and requires resolving several technical and organizational issues, particularly the integration into a unified air defense command-and-control system.
If the trials are successful, Ukraine could become one of the few countries in the world to deploy laser weapons in real combat conditions as a means of countering drones.