On the night of 5 / 6 February 2025, a suspected Shaheed drone launched by Russia smashed into a major project for children's care and rehabilitation in downtown Kharkiv. The location of the project cannot be revealed for reasons of operational security, but it was run by a prominent Ukrainian-Canadian NGO in Kharkiv called HUGS (Help Ukrainians Grassroot Support) and the programme to support children was called SMART (sport, music, art, recreation and technology). The programme existed to support children dislocated from normal life many of them internally displaced persons from the front line, to try to live a normal life away from the fighting.
There is no use the Russians trying to pretend that this was an accident. Shaheed drones are extremely accurate, like most contemporary military technology, and they will have had a specific target with a specific geolocation in mind. So the Russian Armed Forces committed a war crime, in intenationally targeting a civilian NGO project intended to support the most vulnerable victims of war, children.
This is what the project used to look like before its destruction:
And this is what it looks like now:
The actions of the Russians in targeting a recreational centre for displaced children are unspeakable.
If you can contribute to help rebuild this project, please click on the link below and share your generosity. Thank you for anything you can do to help.