A Russian drone strike killed at least 14 people on a crowded railway platform in Dnipro, Ukrainian officials said, while daytime attacks in Chernihiv and Kremenchuk claimed five more lives.
The jet-powered drone hit the city’s main station as a commuter train was preparing to leave for nearby Zaporizhzhia, according to Ukraine’s state rail company Ukrzaliznytsia. Images released by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy showed bodies on the ground as rescuers carried wounded people away on stretchers.
Two teenagers were killed when a drone struck a busy central street in Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine. A further 23 people were wounded, officials said.
“Ordinary, peaceful people were attacked who were just going to work, going about their daily business, making plans for the day,” said Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, head of Chernihiv’s military administration.
In Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine, three people died and 15 were injured when an apartment building was hit, the regional governor said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi accused Russia of targeting civilians in public places and homes.
“Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings,” he wrote on Telegram. “There is no justification for this terror, and there never can be.”
The attacks came as a six-day humanitarian truce in Kherson raised cautious hopes of renewed diplomatic efforts. Brokered with US help, the local arrangement applies only to the southern region and is intended to allow humanitarian aid to reach Oleshky, a Russian-held town that has been isolated in the war zone since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in early 2022.
Zelenskiy called for greater pressure on Moscow after the Dnipro attack, questioning whether easing sanctions on Russian diesel exports and the energy sector had encouraged de-escalation.
“Just how many terrorist strikes has Russia carried out against our people since sanctions were lifted on certain Russian oligarchs and the Russian energy sector, rather than de-escalating?” he wrote on X.
