Elderly man killed in Kharkiv region after stepping on an explosive
A civilian man has been killed in the Kharkiv region after an explosive device detonated, according to the National Police of Ukraine.
A tragic incident occurred on the morning of March 22, 2026, in the village of Prystin, Kupyansk District.
Located on the right bank of the Oskil River, just 2 kilometers upstream from Kupyansk and a mere 6 kilometers from the front line, the settlement remains under constant enemy fire.
The victim was a 60-year-old man who died in the street after stepping on an unidentified explosive device. Elderly Ukrainians suffer from the full-scale war disproportionately: of the more than 15,000 victims of Russian strikes over the past four years, seniors account for nearly half, despite making up only a quarter of the total population.
To provide background, the three regions of Ukraine most heavily contaminated with explosives due to the full-scale war are the border areas of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Kherson — the latter remains divided by the Dnipro River into occupied and unoccupied territories. Nearly half of the approximately 1,000 recorded explosions involving casualties have occurred in the Kharkiv Oblast alone.
Even prior to 2022, mines and unexploded Russian ordnance threatened the lives of at least two million people in Eastern Ukraine. The ZMINA has previously provided a detailed report on the tragic toll these explosions have taken on children in the Donbas.
