CHERNECHCHYNA, Ukraine (AFP) — The last time Natalya saw her neighbour Alyona Lesnichenko, a 26-year-old mother of two from the Ukrainian village of Chernechchyna, she was on a shopping run getting treats for her children.

“She bought them everything they wanted,” Natalya said of Alyona. “Sweets, lemonade, pies, sausage, cheese. Everything.”

Alyona would not let the children come to harm, Natalya said, but even she could not protect them on Tuesday morning, when a Russian drone tore through their family home, killing Alyona — who was pregnant with twins, her husband and the two boys aged four and six.

At a funeral for the family in Chernechchyna on Wednesday, residents who knew them spoke of their shock and disbelief that a single Russian drone could wreak such destruction in such a small, quiet neighbourhood.

“There have been no strikes here during the entire war, none,” said Alina Lagoyda, a relative of the family. “What was it for?”

Alyona’s husband Oleksandr was a soldier who had fought on the front line, neighbour Lubov Panchenko told AFP.

“He fought and fought, and then he came here. And this happened.”

– ‘They were always together’ –
Russia fired an average of around 188 drones a day into Ukraine in September, an increase of more than a third compared with the month before, according to Ukrainian air force data.

It has fired drones at Ukraine every single night since May 10, after a three-day “truce” announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin to coincide with a grand military parade in Moscow ended.

Kyiv says the strikes, typically carried out using cheap Iranian-designed drones known as “Shaheds”, are designed to terrorise the country’s population.

The air force says it shoots most of them down, but the seemingly ever-increasing scale of the attacks and growing civilian toll has started to spook even those in rural areas like Chernechchyna.

Dozens of local residents gathered along the roadside to watch the funeral procession — a hotchpotch of vans and cars — while some threw flowers on the road.

Some attendees carried bouquets of blue and yellow flowers — the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

“The family, the mother, the father, they were always together,” said local councillor Oksana Chernova.

She said the children likely did not have time to get up when the drone hit.

Natalya said Alyona’s sons were “good kids” and that they used to call her “granny”.

“They were good people. But they died that way,” she said.