Girl with eyes full of life: 12-year-old schoolgirl killed in Russian UAV attack on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
Source: Suspilne. Dnipro
Details: The tragedy occurred in the Hubynykha hromada. The victim was a student of a local lyceum, Marharyta Titarenko. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.]
As the girl's grandmother Mariia told Suspilne Dnipro, a pillar fell on her granddaughter as a result of a UAV hit. At the time, Marharyta was sleeping in a room on the first floor.
When rescue workers pulled her out of the rubble, she was still alive.
"It's just beyond words. What could that child have been guilty of? What were they targeting here, if there were civilians living here? I came over on Sunday, and she was quiet, as if she felt it.
Ritochka was downstairs. If it wasn't for the pillar, maybe the child would have survived," the woman says.
Mariia says that Marharyta's parents and her younger sister were sleeping on the second floor. They were taken to hospital for examination because of their injuries.
The woman said that Marharyta used to sing and dance and was a good student.
"She sang very beautifully and danced... Her mother is a teacher, so she was smart beyond her age. She also excelled in mathematics. In fact, in everything," Mariia recalls.
Marharyta was a good student and a creative child.
Photo: Yuliia Tarasova-Cherniavska on Facebook
The girl's neighbours and classmates came to the scene to help.
"She was very kind, friendly, and helped everyone. Most people praised her; she was a good student. She loved mathematics and the Ukrainian language. She loved all subjects," said Kateryna, a classmate of Marharyta.
A friend of the girl, Kira, said that she had last seen her at school the day before her death.
"I can't believe it happened... We were at school just yesterday, and now it's over," the girl said.
Yuliia Tarasova-Cherniavska, a teacher at the Hubynykha Lyceum, said that Marharyta was active and often participated in various events.
"Since kindergarten, the girl has been growing up talented. At the lyceum, she was a winner of art and academic competitions, and an active participant in events at the community centre.
We will remember Marharyta as a bright, sweet, kind, well-mannered, sociable, friendly girl," she wrote.
The house after the UAV hit.
Photo: Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration Head Serhii Lysak on Telegram
"Talented, bright, creative... An innocent angel. Everyone remembers Marharyta's performances in our institution. It is impossible to put into words the feeling of loss.
A charming girl with eyes full of life... Forever in our memory and in the hearts of everyone who knew her," the local Palace of Culture said on its website.
The Hubynykha hromada declared two days of mourning on 29 and 30 April.
"Words cannot express the depth of our grief. This tragedy is another terrible testament to the cruelty of the aggressor, who stops at nothing in its criminal war against Ukraine," the post reads.
Background: On 28 April, Kyiv bid farewell to the family of 17-year-old Danylo Khudei, who was killed in a large-scale Russian attack on the night of 23-24 April along with his parents, Viktoriia and Oleh.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CNN
3 minutes ago
- CNN
Ukraine's fishing net defense against high-tech threat shows the challenges for Kyiv to respond to Russia's summer offensive
The last lifelines into besieged towns along the eastern front line for Ukrainian troops, caught in a web of increasingly lethal and sophisticated drone warfare, rely on a technology millennia old: a fishing net. Strung up on poles along the roadside, the nets provide cover for Ukrainian troops from Russian drones often circulating deep inside their territory, as the tiny explosive devices get caught in their tough string. Few places are this low-tech defense against a high-tech threat more vital than Kostiantynivka, one of three frontline towns where Ukrainian forces are increasingly at risk of encirclement by a Russian summer offensive, rapidly turning incremental gains into a strategic advantage. A Ukrainian commander defending the area told CNN he had not received new personnel in his unit for eight months and was only resupplying frontline positions – where sometimes a pair of soldiers hold off over a dozen Russian attackers – with drones, as vehicles would not reach the trenches. Near Kostiantynivka, locals pass unperturbed in the gaps they have made in the nets – their daily needs more vital than the net's protection – leaving holes sometimes exploited by the more deft Russian drone operators. Moscow's elite drone unit, Sudnyi Den have posted video of their drones inside the netting, sometimes working in pairs. In footage from July 20, one drone strikes a Ukrainian military SUV, while another films the impact as it sits on the gravel nearby, waiting for another target. Four civilians have been killed and 31 injured over the past week, due to Russian strikes, according to Kostiantynivka City Officials. The children have been evacuated and just over 8,000 civilians remain in the town itself. Its streets are peppered with cars struck by Russian drones, over the last month when the town came into range of advancing Russian forces. Even on the town's safer edges, a white minivan sat abandoned, its passenger side crumpled in from a drone strike hours earlier on Saturday. The driver of the vehicle was killed, the local governor said Sunday, even though the explosives on the drone failed to detonate. Lying nearby is a tangle of thin string that is defining the war now – not fishing net, but fiber-optic cable, used to prevent drones being jammed. Russian and Ukrainian operators use tens of kilometers of the razor-thin glass wires to stay physically attached to some drones – the cables stretching out across vast expanses of the battlefield – enabling them to directly control the devices in spite of any jamming. Shuffling past the ruins, is Tatiana, who is returning from her old home on the outskirts of town, where she has fed her dog and collected some possessions. 'It Is heavy there, really heavy,' she said. 'Nobody on the street. I have nowhere else to go'. In the past week, according to mapping by the open-source monitor DeepState, Russian forces have advanced to within eight kilometers of the town's south-eastern edges, and to its south-west. Maintaining incremental progress at the cost of huge casualties has been the hallmark of Moscow's war effort for years, but the simultaneous advances around the eastern towns of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka and, further north, Kupiansk, risk giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a reshaped front line and transforming his claim on the Ukrainian Donetsk region, a key goal. Kostiantynivka's central market is still an oasis of activity, where locals bustle to gather food, despite the risk of drone and artillery attacks. Many are reluctant to let their faces be filmed, an indication they might fear being labelled pro-Ukrainian in the event the town is soon occupied. 'Now they will bomb us,' said one elderly woman, a reference to fears Russian forces use news footage to assist targeting. Another man, who did not give his name, a native of Azerbaijan selling fruit, loudly proclaimed 'Glory to Ukraine' and 'Glory to the Heroes,' pro-Ukrainian slogans. 'What do you see?' he asked. 'There is no calm today. Shooting, of course.' Control for the skies takes place underground. Vasyl, a local commander, purveys a bank of monitors inside his basement. The war now is split in two: those hunted by drones on the horrific front lines, and the hunters themselves, their drone operations bunkers and positions hit often by airstrikes. On the screen behind Vasyl, a mushroom cloud burrows into the sky – a Russian airstrike trying to target Ukrainian operators. His enduring problem is people: for eight months Vasyl, from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, has not been sent new personnel. 'We have a critical shortage of personnel. No one wants to fight. The war is over (for them). The old personnel are left, they are tired and want to be replaced, but no one is replacing them.' Vasyl's remaining infantry hold positions sometimes in pairs and are delivered food, water and ammunition in the half-light of dawn or dusk when the larger Ukrainian Vampire quadcopter drones can fly. 'We load 10 kilograms of supplies,' he said. 'And it flies 12-15 kilometers, carrying supplies. Food, ammunition, batteries, chargers for radio stations.' Frontline positions are so vulnerable to Russian drones that mortar teams often have to walk many hours on foot, Vasyl said, carrying 30 kilograms of ammunition and equipment. The commander said newer Russian drone teams, known as the Rubicon unit, are well-trained and professional, sometimes using only a thread, dangled by another drone flying on top of a Ukrainian device, to entangle in its rotors and cause the Ukrainian drone to crash. Vasyl said poor communication from the front lines of the nature of military problems was a serious issue. 'A lot of things are not communicated and are hidden' he said. 'We don't communicate a lot of things to our state. Our state doesn't communicate a lot of things to the people.' 'To understand the situation, you have to be in it,' he said. 'When we say that the situation is difficult, no one understands. You have to be in our shoes. We are tired. Everyone is tired of this war, and I believe that other countries are also tired of helping us.'


CNN
5 minutes ago
- CNN
Ukraine's fishing net defense against high-tech threat shows the challenges for Kyiv to respond to Russia's summer offensive
The last lifelines into besieged towns along the eastern front line for Ukrainian troops, caught in a web of increasingly lethal and sophisticated drone warfare, rely on a technology millennia old: a fishing net. Strung up on poles along the roadside, the nets provide cover for Ukrainian troops from Russian drones often circulating deep inside their territory, as the tiny explosive devices get caught in their tough string. Few places are this low-tech defense against a high-tech threat more vital than Kostiantynivka, one of three frontline towns where Ukrainian forces are increasingly at risk of encirclement by a Russian summer offensive, rapidly turning incremental gains into a strategic advantage. A Ukrainian commander defending the area told CNN he had not received new personnel in his unit for eight months and was only resupplying frontline positions – where sometimes a pair of soldiers hold off over a dozen Russian attackers – with drones, as vehicles would not reach the trenches. Near Kostiantynivka, locals pass unperturbed in the gaps they have made in the nets – their daily needs more vital than the net's protection – leaving holes sometimes exploited by the more deft Russian drone operators. Moscow's elite drone unit, Sudnyi Den have posted video of their drones inside the netting, sometimes working in pairs. In footage from July 20, one drone strikes a Ukrainian military SUV, while another films the impact as it sits on the gravel nearby, waiting for another target. Four civilians have been killed and 31 injured over the past week, due to Russian strikes, according to Kostiantynivka City Officials. The children have been evacuated and just over 8,000 civilians remain in the town itself. Its streets are peppered with cars struck by Russian drones, over the last month when the town came into range of advancing Russian forces. Even on the town's safer edges, a white minivan sat abandoned, its passenger side crumpled in from a drone strike hours earlier on Saturday. The driver of the vehicle was killed, the local governor said Sunday, even though the explosives on the drone failed to detonate. Lying nearby is a tangle of thin string that is defining the war now – not fishing net, but fiber-optic cable, used to prevent drones being jammed. Russian and Ukrainian operators use tens of kilometers of the razor-thin glass wires to stay physically attached to some drones – the cables stretching out across vast expanses of the battlefield – enabling them to directly control the devices in spite of any jamming. Shuffling past the ruins, is Tatiana, who is returning from her old home on the outskirts of town, where she has fed her dog and collected some possessions. 'It Is heavy there, really heavy,' she said. 'Nobody on the street. I have nowhere else to go'. In the past week, according to mapping by the open-source monitor DeepState, Russian forces have advanced to within eight kilometers of the town's south-eastern edges, and to its south-west. Maintaining incremental progress at the cost of huge casualties has been the hallmark of Moscow's war effort for years, but the simultaneous advances around the eastern towns of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka and, further north, Kupiansk, risk giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a reshaped front line and transforming his claim on the Ukrainian Donetsk region, a key goal. Kostiantynivka's central market is still an oasis of activity, where locals bustle to gather food, despite the risk of drone and artillery attacks. Many are reluctant to let their faces be filmed, an indication they might fear being labelled pro-Ukrainian in the event the town is soon occupied. 'Now they will bomb us,' said one elderly woman, a reference to fears Russian forces use news footage to assist targeting. Another man, who did not give his name, a native of Azerbaijan selling fruit, loudly proclaimed 'Glory to Ukraine' and 'Glory to the Heroes,' pro-Ukrainian slogans. 'What do you see?' he asked. 'There is no calm today. Shooting, of course.' Control for the skies takes place underground. Vasyl, a local commander, purveys a bank of monitors inside his basement. The war now is split in two: those hunted by drones on the horrific front lines, and the hunters themselves, their drone operations bunkers and positions hit often by airstrikes. On the screen behind Vasyl, a mushroom cloud burrows into the sky – a Russian airstrike trying to target Ukrainian operators. His enduring problem is people: for eight months Vasyl, from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, has not been sent new personnel. 'We have a critical shortage of personnel. No one wants to fight. The war is over (for them). The old personnel are left, they are tired and want to be replaced, but no one is replacing them.' Vasyl's remaining infantry hold positions sometimes in pairs and are delivered food, water and ammunition in the half-light of dawn or dusk when the larger Ukrainian Vampire quadcopter drones can fly. 'We load 10 kilograms of supplies,' he said. 'And it flies 12-15 kilometers, carrying supplies. Food, ammunition, batteries, chargers for radio stations.' Frontline positions are so vulnerable to Russian drones that mortar teams often have to walk many hours on foot, Vasyl said, carrying 30 kilograms of ammunition and equipment. The commander said newer Russian drone teams, known as the Rubicon unit, are well-trained and professional, sometimes using only a thread, dangled by another drone flying on top of a Ukrainian device, to entangle in its rotors and cause the Ukrainian drone to crash. Vasyl said poor communication from the front lines of the nature of military problems was a serious issue. 'A lot of things are not communicated and are hidden' he said. 'We don't communicate a lot of things to our state. Our state doesn't communicate a lot of things to the people.' 'To understand the situation, you have to be in it,' he said. 'When we say that the situation is difficult, no one understands. You have to be in our shoes. We are tired. Everyone is tired of this war, and I believe that other countries are also tired of helping us.'


New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Obama's bruised ego was behind the corrupt plot to bring down Trump
The Donald Trump-Russia collusion scandal that first broke in December 2016 and roared on until April 2019 has no parallel in our history — it's not even close. As president-elect and later as sitting president, Trump was accused by the country's intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus of conspiring with a hostile power to subvert the 2016 election and sneak a crooked path to the White House. Along the way, a damning Intelligence Community Assessment was issued, a major FBI investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, targeted the president, and a special counsel, Robert Mueller, was granted a team of prosecutors and a budget of millions to bring the guilty to justice. Advertisement It was the most sensational news story in history. By one estimate, more than half a million articles were written about the collusion issue, the vast majority asserting or assuming criminality on Trump's part. A manic media competed fiercely to deliver the latest 'bombshell.' Advertisement For over two years, the first Trump administration was forced to conduct America's business while in the fetal position. How much truth, you ask, did the accusations of collusion with Russia contain? None. Zilch. Nada. The entire episode was concocted out of whole cloth by the Obama White House, with an assist from the Hilary Clinton campaign and the eager cooperation of the heads of the FBI (James Comey), the CIA (John Brennan), and NSA (James Clapper), plus various zealous underlings. Bam on a mission Advertisement Before asking the obvious questions, let's pause for a moment to absorb this astounding fact: There was zero evidence, classified or otherwise, to justify the fuss, distraction and cost of the whole clamorous affair. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents that show the intelligence agencies did not believe that 'Russian or criminal actors' impacted the 2016 presidential election. Eric Lee – Pool Via Cnp/CNP via ZUMA Press Wire Pro-Trump fake news, as independent studies have consistently shown, had no effect on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Mueller, in his final report, rather grumpily admitted that the two-year-plus investigation he led 'did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.' Advertisement In fact, as of Dec. 8, 2016, the intelligence agencies believed that 'Russian or criminal actors did not impact recent US election results,' according to documents recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Yet on Dec. 9, President Obama, in essence, tasked the agencies to change their minds and come up with the opposite conclusion. They complied with a hastily-drafted ICA stating that 'Russian President Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,' and 'Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.' On Jan. 17, three days before Trump's swearing-in ceremony, an unclassified version of the ICA was made available to the public. The lack of evidence was obscured with a tactic familiar to those who have worked in intelligence: The proof, the authors claimed, was super-secret and hyper-classified. Gabbard's declassification campaign has exposed the naked falsehood of that claim. The Obama administration, Gabbard now maintains, was guilty of a 'treasonous conspiracy' to undermine Trump's 2016 election victory. Advertisement Now, 'treasonous' is a strong word — although, to be fair, former CIA chief Brennan applied the same word to Trump at the height of the collusion uproar. One thing is certain: The corpse of the Trump-Russia scandal has risen like a zombie and is now shambling towards its originators in the hope of eating their brains. I'm content to leave the legal and constitutional implications of this tawdry episode to the experts who can best explain them. My interest is in finding the answer to a basic question: What, in the end, was the point of the exercise? Out to sully '16 win Advertisement Evidently, the Obama White House, in its waning days, aimed to 'subvert President Trump's 2016 victory,' as Gabbard has said. In that, it succeeded brilliantly. Leaks to The New York Times and The Washington Post began as early as Dec. 9, before the intelligence people even had time to concoct their story. The bombardment continued for the duration, leaving the Trump administration bruised and battered under the shadow of the scandal. A chart shared by the White House on the creation of the 'Russia Hoax.' LENIN NOLLY/SIPA/Shutterstock Advertisement To this day, 60% of Democrats believe that Trump climbed to high office with a helpful push from his friend Vladimir. But the case against Trump was based on nothing. For all the bureaucratic grinding, leaking and noise-making, the investigation was bound sooner or later to arrive at that point: nothing. Trump would be exonerated. The probability was much higher than zero that he, or some future Republican president, would demand an accounting for the fraud. The Obama and Clinton people would then trade places with the Trumpists. Advertisement The prosecutors would be prosecuted. That, of course, is precisely what has happened. Again: What political advantage was worth taking that risk? One grateful beneficiary of the collusion story was Clinton, who could now answer, to everyone's satisfaction, the question that had been tormenting her since Election Day: 'How on earth could you possibly lose to that guy?' The election that ended with her defeat, Clinton happily proclaimed, 'was not on the level.' The scandal, however, was a wholly owned Obama operation. His tasking of the intel community, a month after the election had passed, fixated the government on the collusion question. The Dec. 9 meeting to which he abruptly invited the agency heads to reach a foregone conclusion included White House enforcers like Ben Rhodes. The rushed schedule ensured the ICA was completed on his watch and under his watchful eyes. Did Dems believe it? Barack Obama was deeply invested in discrediting Donald Trump, even before the latter assumed the presidency. No doubt there were partisan and personal reasons for the rancor. We may take it for granted that Obama loathed the sight of Trump. But by that point, he was the lamest of lame ducks. Only weeks remained of his time in office. Obama was already ascending majestically to the Olympus reserved for retired two-term presidents. The extraordinary activity of those last days requires an explanation. One possibility is that Obama and his people believed their own lies. They really thought Trump was a Russian operative, inserted into the Oval Office so he could destroy the country following the script of the 1962 movie, 'The Manchurian Candidate.' That's unlikely, for a couple of reasons. If President Obama truly imagined Trump to be a foreign agent, he had every incentive to raise the alarm — not in an obscure intelligence report, but in public, before a national audience. More to the point, when it came to American politics, Obama was a cold and calculating realist. He knew perfectly well when he was shading the truth to obtain a political advantage. As the bizarre drafting process of the ICA demonstrates, the same was true of top bureaucrats like Brennan and Comey. Everyone in this affair knew exactly what they were doing. My take is that the attempted smearing of Trump was literally a vanity project for Obama, a man with an exalted view of himself, his personal achievements and his place in history. His followers — a set that included pretty much all institutional elites — worshipped him. From the idealist perspective, he was seen as the embodiment of hope and change, humane policymaking and smart diplomacy. From a political angle, he was thought to be, like Franklin Roosevelt, a 'transformational' figure, as the coalition he assembled of college-educated, minority, and young voters would provide a permanent Democratic Party majority for decades, if not forever. That was the realistic position as the 2016 elections approached. It would take a man with a prodigious capacity for self-criticism not to believe such a flattering appraisal — and Obama, to put it mildly, was not that man. Trump's victory in 2016 shattered all of these illusions. Suddenly, Obama was no longer a political messiah ushering in a liberal golden age. He was a helpless failure and an object of repudiation. New level of deranged He understood, as a realist, that he had been the cause of which Trump was the effect. His vanity and self-image, I'm guessing, must have suffered a tremendous shock. Trump was a fluke, a hoax, an impossibility. He had to be exposed as both a monstrous aberration and a depraved departure from his predecessor's enlightened ways. President Obama wanted his mojo back. With the collusion scandal, he got it. On the day he left office, he was more popular with the public than he ever had been, while Trump's popularity plummeted. Was the elaborate charade worth it? Maybe so — only the former president is privy to his own internal states. But on July 23, Gabbard referred his case to the Department of Justice for potential criminal investigation. Call it tit for tat, with terrible repercussions all around — for himself, the country, even his antagonists. A Trump administration prosecution of Obama, I believe, would be a moral and political horror show. In these days of rage and riots, it would inaugurate a whole new level of derangement. At a time when we need forward progress, it would swivel our heads backwards the better to inspect minutely the sins of the past. There's a saner way to proceed. Find Robert Mueller's evil twin, appoint him special counsel, and let him loose for years to hound the paper trail of Barack Obama and the rest of the Trump-Russia crowd. That, in my humble opinion, would really be tit for tat . . .