Russian Drone Strike on Dnipro Rail Station Kills at Least 14 as Two Other Cities Are Hit

Dnipro, Ukraine. A Russian drone attack on a packed railway platform in Dnipro on Thursday left at least 14 people dead, officials said. Daytime strikes on two other Ukrainian cities killed five more people.

Strikes in Chernihiv and Kremenchuk

Two teenage girls died on a street in the centre of Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine. In the central city of Kremenchuk, three people were killed when residential buildings were hit.

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Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi wrote on Telegram that Russia is deliberately targeting civilians on trains, at stations and in homes. He added: “There is no justification for this terror, and there never can be.”

Scene at the Dnipro station

The state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia reported that a jet-powered drone hit a platform at the main station in Dnipro, where a commuter train was about to leave. Bodies lay across the pavement, which was scarred by shrapnel and stained with pools of blood. Police placed remains in black body bags while an air-raid siren sounded.

Svitlana Shcherbak, a 67-year-old traveller who was sheltering underground at the station, asked what goal the Russians were trying to achieve. She said she did not understand it at all.

Local truce in Kherson region

A six-day truce, arranged with US help, applies only to the southern region of Kherson. There, a humanitarian mission was under way to bring relief to the Russian-held town of Oleshky, which has been cut off in a war zone since Russia’s invasion began in 2022. The truce prompted cautious hopes that diplomacy could resume.

Pressure on infrastructure

In the rest of the country, Russian drone and missile attacks on critical infrastructure, including the rail network, have disrupted civilian life and badly damaged the economy. The strikes take advantage of a severe shortage of air defence missiles.

Moscow denies striking non-military targets, although its growing bombing campaign against Ukrainian cities regularly kills civilians.