They were both 75, and they died together. A married couple in Odesa never woke up on the morning of April 24, 2026, after a Russian drone tore into the two-story building where they lived.
The story begins in the dark. Through the night, Russia sent a series of drones at the southern port city and the area around it. By the time rescuers reached the worst-hit streets, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service counted two dead and 14 injured. Serhii Lysak, who heads the Odesa regional military administration, later put the injured at 15, eight of them in hospital.
What unfolded across the city was spread over several addresses. One drone hit a three-story residential block, wrecked apartments and set the building on fire. Six people were hurt there. Two other two-story homes were destroyed. Firefighters pulled one person out and led 20 more to safety, two of them children, and seven people were injured. A further drone struck a two-story building, and that is where the couple died. Another resident was wounded, and sixteen people were evacuated.
Fire at sea as well
The raid reached the water too. Two drones hit a bulk carrier sailing along Ukraine’s maritime corridor toward a Black Sea port in the greater Odesa area, the country’s seaports authority said. The ship flew the flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Its crew put out the fire themselves, and early information suggested nobody was hurt.
Lysak posted pictures of one building swallowed by flames and another with a side torn away, while crews worked inside the wreckage. “Municipal services have been working at the sites of the hits since night,” he said. More than 50 residents, three of them children, who were suffering from severe stress, received help from State Emergency Service specialists.
The wider night
Across Ukraine, Russia launched two ballistic missiles and 107 drones overnight, according to the Air Force. Air defences destroyed or jammed 96 of the drones. Ten drones and both missiles still found their targets. Russia, for its part, said it shot down 10 Ukrainian drones in the same hours.
The attack came on a day of other news for the war’s fifth year. The European Union approved a new round of sanctions aimed at Russian energy, banking and trade, tightening pressure on the “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers Moscow uses to get around oil export limits. It also formally approved a 90 billion-euro loan for Ukraine, expected to cover about two-thirds of its funding needs for 2026 and 2027.
For the families on those streets in Odesa, sanctions and loans were far away. The rescuers were still working, and an elderly couple had died in their home.
Sources
- Elderly married couple killed in Russian attack on Ukraine's Odesa
- Two killed and 15 injured in an Odesa drone attack
