--- title: "Russian Drone Kills a Soldier’s Wife at Her Kyiv Office as Assaults on the Capital Grow" description: "Masha Yivzhenko, 29, was one of at least 98 people killed in the Kyiv region during Russia’s near-daily aerial campaign since Aug. 27." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-05T04:00:45.414Z modified: 2026-10-05T09:18:27Z url: https://rews.cc/a/russian-drone-kills-a-soldier-s-wife-at-her-kyiv-office-as-a-eb7b68 language: en tags: ["war", "ukraine", "drones", "infrastructure", "children", "europe", "world"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Russian Drone Kills a Soldier’s Wife at Her Kyiv Office as Assaults on the Capital Grow *Masha Yivzhenko, 29, was one of at least 98 people killed in the Kyiv region during Russia’s near-daily aerial campaign since Aug. 27.* By rews desk · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/russian-drone-kills-a-soldier-s-wife-at-her-kyiv-office-as-a-eb7b68 ## In brief - Masha Yivzhenko, 29, was killed when a Geran-5 jet-powered drone hit her central Kyiv office building on Sept. 25 - At least 98 people were killed and 435 injured in Kyiv and its region between Aug. 27 and Oct. 4 (CNN) - Kyiv has averaged seven air raid alerts a day since Aug. 27, with as many as 13 on some days - Russia launched 2,850 jet-powered drones in August and 3,177 in September, the Ukrainian Air Force said - Kyiv’s Southern Bridge was struck five times in two days and the Northern Bridge twice over the weekend; a pontoon bridge is planned A Russian jet-powered drone struck an office building in central Kyiv on Sept. 25, killing a 29-year-old woman who had stopped by to pick up her laptop, one of at least 98 people killed in the capital and its surrounding region since Russia began a near-nonstop aerial assault in late August, CNN reported. Masha Yivzhenko was a civilian. Her husband, Danylo Yivzhenko, is a combat medic with Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade who enlisted in 2024 after working as a volunteer medic from the start of the war. The risk, he believed, belonged to him. ‘I am a soldier and I am fighting against Russia. If a Russian military drone or a ballistic missile, or whatever else, kills me, that is fair. We kill Russians. Russians kill us. We are servicemen; we understand what we are doing,’ Mr. Yivzhenko told CNN. ‘But Masha was a civilian. She did not assemble drones, she did not hold a weapon in her hands, she did not wear a military uniform. She was a civilian in a civilian city who was simply doing her civilian job that day.’ Daily life in Kyiv stopped on Aug. 27, when Russia began pounding the city with near-continuous strikes. Not a day since has passed without an air raid warning, CNN reported. The city has averaged seven alerts a day; some days have brought 13. Between Aug. 27 and Oct. 4, at least 98 people were killed and 435 were injured in Kyiv and the wider region. Russia says it strikes only military targets, despite ample evidence that civilian sites are hit regularly. Ukraine’s military is increasingly unable to shield the capital. It is critically short of air defense weapons, and the military is racing to develop effective interceptors at home, CNN reported, with no meaningful change so far. The weapons driving the campaign are Russia’s new jet-powered drones, the Geran-4 and Geran-5, which resemble small cruise missiles, fly at up to 600 kilometers per hour (about 310 miles per hour) and are usually too fast and too high for Kyiv’s mobile fire groups — a shortage that has let the drones [outrun Ukraine’s air defenses](https://rews.cc/a/russia-s-600-kilometer-an-hour-drones-are-outrunning-ukraine-a216e6). The drones also cost as little as a tenth of a traditional cruise missile, so Russia can launch dozens at once. Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said Russia launched 2,850 of them in August and 3,177 in September. Ms. Yivzhenko was killed by a Geran-5. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said a second drone circled the strike site at high altitude, relaying a radio signal to the weapon, then flew off to attack a McDonald’s warehouse in the Kyiv suburbs. The newest targets are the bridges over the Dnipro River, which split Kyiv between its right bank and the mostly residential left and carry about 600,000 vehicles a day. The Southern Bridge was hit five times within two days last Thursday and Friday, and the Northern Bridge was hit twice over the weekend, strikes that [officials said are cutting the capital in two](https://rews.cc/a/zelensky-says-putin-will-intensify-attacks-on-civilians-as-u-8a4a64). City authorities have begun work on a pontoon bridge. Mr. Yivzhenko said he and his wife, both former journalists, ‘always had something interesting to talk about.’ ‘She was my best friend and my whole life was built around the fact that we had each other,’ he said. When he enlisted, the couple got a dog, Jessie, so she would not be completely alone. They took out a mortgage on an apartment and bought her a car because they were planning to have children. On the day of the attack, during a few days’ leave in Kyiv, Mr. Yivzhenko drove his wife to her office to pick up her laptop so she could work from home. She ran in for a few minutes while he walked Jessie. Then the drone struck. First responders told him she had died on impact; her body was found under the stairs on the first floor. ‘She didn’t burn, she didn’t bleed to death. She died instantly. The blast wave threw her down from the fifth floor,’ he told CNN. ‘I identified her, and they let me go. I have buried my brothers-in-arms and I am mentally prepared for the fact that I will bury my parents when they get old. But by killing Masha, they killed me.’