Children are not only dying from missiles: in Kalush, a mother is suspected of brutally murdering her daughter
Children die every day in Ukraine, they become victims of shelling, mines, airstrikes, disappearances and deportations. Every such report is a great grief and another proof that war kills the least protected and the most vulnerable. However, even against this background, stories in which the death of a child occurs at the hands of a mother, who should be the personification of love, care and protection, sound especially painful. Unfortunately, such cases are not isolated, one of them was the tragedy that happened on June 7, 2025 in the city of Kalush in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
The morning that became the last
Saturday morning, June 7, was ordinary until the moment when a resident of an apartment building turned to the police with a message: strange sounds could be heard from the neighboring apartment – screams, crying, despair. She called the police and, as it turned out later, did it in the last minutes of the child’s life. The police arrived at the scene and found that the apartment was locked. To get inside, they turned to the owner of the house, which was rented by a woman with a child. He opened the door.
The picture that appeared before the law enforcement officers was terrible. The body of a three-year-old girl born in 2021 was found in the apartment. Her grieving mother was also in the room, who did not give any explanation, did not try to justify herself, did not express any emotion – at least this is what was recorded in official reports. She reported about it police Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Investigation: what is known about the suspect
After the initial inspection of the scene, the law enforcement officers seized material evidence, which, according to the police, indicates a direct connection between the 32-year-old mother and the child’s murder. Preliminary results do not indicate the involvement of third parties. It is known that the woman lived with the girl in a rented apartment. She was not registered in psychiatric or drug addiction institutions, and was not recorded by the services as requiring special attention or assistance. Social services did not consider her dangerous.
Investigators opened a criminal case under the second part of Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — intentional killing of a minor child. The sanction of the article provides from ten to fifteen years of imprisonment or life imprisonment. During the investigation, the court ordered the woman to be detained in custody.
Silence that speaks louder than words
Official sources do not disclose the motives of the murder at the moment, because the grieving mother is silent, does not show signs of resistance or remorse, but is sitting in a pre-trial detention center and waiting for further examinations. But silence does not remove questions. And the most important of them – how and why did it happen that a child in a peaceful city in a peaceful apartment became a victim, and her mother became the murderer?
You can assume different things. Perhaps it was a sudden mental breakdown. Perhaps a hidden reactive psychosis. Or perhaps — quiet, unnoticed social degradation against the background of hopelessness, isolation, emotional burnout. The war created tens of thousands of situations where mothers were left alone with small children, without a partner, stable income and systemic support. But none of these explanations justify the murder, they only outline the circle of what society is afraid to talk about out loud.
Insufficient interoperability of services: whether risks could have been identified earlier
In situations similar to the one that happened in Kalusha, the question arises: could the environment or state structures detect signs of danger for the child in time. The woman lived with her child in a rented apartment. She was not registered in medical institutions, was not recorded in surveillance or support systems. But were there really no signals during this time that could attract attention – from the neighbors, the owner of the house, employees of the kindergarten, polyclinic or social services?
It is possible that certain signs of instability or life difficulties did exist, but were overlooked or not interpreted as requiring intervention. The system of social support in Ukraine often works reactively — it intervenes when the irreparable has already happened. In many cases, there is a lack of prompt identification of vulnerable families, as well as resources to support those who do not seek help voluntarily. In such cases, it is usually difficult to establish a clear cause and effect relationship.
It is important that attention to the emotional state of mothers and living conditions of children is not limited to crisis cases. Prevention, early detection of psycho-emotional exhaustion, affordable psychological counseling and systematic involvement of social services should be part of routine practice — especially for those who are raising a child alone.
Such situations indicate not only an individual tragedy, but also the need to improve the response system. This includes regular monitoring of living conditions of children in vulnerable categories of families, organization of access to free psychological assistance for mothers, revision of algorithms of interaction between medical institutions, educational institutions and social services. Successful prevention is possible when specialists are not afraid to intervene in time, and state policy supports such actions procedurally and financially.
The child’s death in Kalusha was probably the result of a combination of factors: the mother’s individual condition, the lack of external support, and the limitations of early intervention mechanisms. This case cannot be interpreted only as a tragedy of one family, it should become a basis for solving the problem – how to prevent situations that can end in a similar way in difficult social circumstances.
