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.”
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.
‘They were always together’
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.
– Agence France-Presse