A heartbreaking image of Dmytro Kubata, the 13-year-old victim of the Russian shelling attack in Kharkiv, shows his grief-stricken father kneeling beside the boy’s body, holding his hand.
Tragic Dmytro was waiting at a bus stop with his sister Ksenia on Wednesday when Putin's missile struck.
The huge blast severely struck a mosque, a medical facility and a shopping area, according to officials and witnesses at the scene.
Dmytro's sister, 15-year-old Ksenia, was seriously injured in the shelling and was rushed to hospital in a grave condition, local authorities reported.
Oleh Synehubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region, said Dmytro was one of three people killed in Kharkiv on Wednesday.
An elderly man and a woman also lost their lives in the blast, but it was not clear whether all three died at the bus stop.
Ksenia is now in hospital “seriously wounded” and “fighting for her life”, said Ukrainian chess player Natalia Zhukova, a family friend.
Their bereft father Vyacheslav Kubata knelt for two hours by his son’s body.
Zhukova said: “His father read prayers for two hours, all this time holding his son's hand.
“And at this time Russian and Belarusian chess players are calmly playing chess. Because this is not their war?”
The father’s raw pain as he prayed by his dead son was one of the most heart-wrenching images of the almost five months of war.
The boy’s mother is Viktoria Kubata, an international women's chess master and chess coach at the Pishak club in Kharkiv.
Dmytro studied at the 17th school in Kharkiv, which was destroyed in an earlier Russian attack on 1 June.
"These wonderful kids used to go to the same dance club with my daughter. How scary... How painful...How painful it was to look at the photo in the news in the morning...", family friend Olena posted on social media.
Another friend Ksenia Naumova wrote: ”At 9:30am, an enemy rocket hit our…Dima (Dmytro).
“This tragedy is our personal one.
“Dima was the first to lend a hand to my son when he went to his new school.
“This remained forever in our hearts.
“Dima was a bright, cultured, intellectual child who was often above ordinary human bustle.
“Dima was always for Good.”
The brutal shelling and missile attacks by Russia showed no signs of abating, with the Kremlin announcing on Wednesday that they were seeking to expand their war aims.
The bombardment came after Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, reiterated the Kremlin's plans to seize territories beyond eastern Ukraine, where they had been more recently focusing their efforts.
He said to Russian state TV on Wednesday that their "geographical tasks will be pushed even further from the current line because we cannot allow the part of Ukraine under control of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy."
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the Russians are targeting peaceful residential areas and urged civilians to lay low and be careful.
