A Ukrainian father lost his entire family — including his wife and three daughters — in a Russian drone and missile attack on Lviv overnight, the city’s mayor said on Wednesday.
Yevheniya Bazylevych’s family was among the seven killed in the western Ukraine city, which is close to the Polish border, a day after one of the deadliest missile attacks since the war began, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.
“In the center of Europe, Russia is eliminating Ukrainians by (killing off) entire families. The Russians are killing our children, our future,” the mayor wrote in a post on X.
“After today’s attack, the only person in this photo who survived is the man,” he added alongside a photo of the family. “Mother Yevheniya and her three daughters — Yaryna, Daryna, and Emiliya — were killed.”
Bazylevych’s daughters were seven, 18 and 21 years old.
The couple’s eldest daughter, Yaryna, had worked on youth projects in the mayor’s office, according to Sadovyi.
The strikes, which damaged more than 70 structures, including schools, homes and clinics in the heart of the city, also left more than 50 people injured, local officials said.
Footage from the site showed emergency service workers retrieving bodies from a damaged residential building as a woman begged for information about her daughter and granddaughters.
Another clip posted by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed rescue crews carrying out what appeared to be the body of a girl from under the rubble as a bloodied Bazylevych trailed behind.
Meanwhile, Russia also attacked the city of Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday, injuring five people — including a 10-year-old child.
The attack damaged four educational institutions, a hotel, a pharmacy and a slew of shops, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
The missile strikes came a day after the war’s deadliest single strike this year after Russia hit a military institute in Poltava with two ballistic missiles, killing 50 and wounding hundreds more.
Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down seven out of 13 missiles, as well as 22 out of 29 drones, across the country during the latest spate of attacks.
Following the strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said allies could help stop the “terror” by providing more air defenses — and repeated calls for partners to allow the use of long-range Western weapons deeper into Russian territory.
“Everyone who persuades partners to give Ukraine more long-range capability to respond to terror fairly is working to prevent exactly these kinds of Russian terrorist strikes on Ukrainian cities,” Zelensky said.
But Russia, which has yet to comment on the strikes on Lviv or on Tuesday’s attack on Poltava, vowed Wednesday that Moscow would deliver an “extremely painful” response in the event of long-range strikes on Russian territory by Ukraine.
Moscow has been pounding Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones in the past 10 days. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, are forging ahead with its recent incursion into Russian territory.
