Russian missile strikes on Tuesday devastated schools, hospitals, and kindergartens in central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens more, as the area faces increasing pressure from Russian battlefield advances.
These attacks occurred as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the Netherlands for meetings with allies on the sidelines of the NATO defence alliance summit.
A senior Ukrainian source told AFP that Zelensky is expected to meet with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday to discuss further sanctions against Russia and arms procurement.
Emergency services in Dnipropetrovsk released grim photos of rescuers aiding bloodied civilians following the assaults.
President Zelensky reacted to the attacks by stating, “This is not a fight where it’s hard to choose a side. Standing with Ukraine means defending life.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, condemned the strikes as a “rejection of peace” from Russia, urging allies to “step up pressure on Moscow.”
Ukrainian police reported that 11 residents were killed in Dnipro city and two more in the nearby town of Samar, with over 100 wounded.
An administrative building, shops, educational facilities, and a children’s hospital were among the damaged sites. These attacks on Dnipro’s capital came just hours after deadly overnight drone strikes in the northeastern Sumy region, bordering Russia, where three people, including a toddler, were killed.
Oleg Grygorov, head of Sumy’s military administration, described pulling a five-year-old boy from the rubble, noting how the strike “took the lives of people from different families… They went to sleep in their homes, but the Russian drones interrupted their sleep forever.”
In related incidents, a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s western border region of Belgorod killed one man, while another drone targeted a residential building in Moscow overnight, wounding two, including a pregnant woman.
Russia, which invaded Ukraine over three years ago, recently claimed to have reached the border of the central industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, marking a new foothold in the war.
Russia currently occupies approximately a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions since its 2022 invasion, in addition to Crimea, seized in 2014.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately undermining peace talks to prolong its full-scale offensive and seize more territory.
