A Russian drone strike killed at least 14 people at the main railway station in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday, while attacks on Chernihiv and Kremenchuk killed five more, Ukrainian officials announced. The strikes came as a localized humanitarian ceasefire continued to hold in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in the Kherson Region.
Ukraine’s state railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, said a jet-powered drone struck a platform at Dnipro’s main station as Train No. 866, a commuter service to nearby Zaporizhzhia, was preparing to depart. Despite an air raid warning and notice of an increased threat, a large number of passengers were on the platform.
Images posted by President Volodymyr Zelensky showed bodies on the ground as emergency workers carried wounded people away on stretchers. Regional authorities said at least 13 people were injured, four of them seriously, including a child.
Importantly, the ceasefire that is in effect applies only to the area around Oleshky, located on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro River; it is intended to allow humanitarian aid into the city and civilians to evacuate. The agreement was reached with U.S. mediation and took effect on Oct. 27. Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said Thursday that no violations had been recorded after 54 hours and that crews were clearing mines from evacuation routes ahead of planned aid deliveries.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia has continued drone and missile attacks on critical infrastructure, including the railway network, increasing pressure on civilians and the economy as Ukraine faces shortages of air defense missiles.
Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians. Nevertheless, two 15-year-old girls were killed and 23 people wounded when a drone struck a busy street in the northern city of Chernihiv. And in the central city of Kremenchuk, a strike on an apartment building killed three people and wounded 15.
“Russia is deliberately targeting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhiy Koretskyi wrote on Telegram. “There is no justification for this terror, and there never can be.”
Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, the head of the Chernihiv’s military administration wrote that: “Ordinary, peaceful people were attacked who were just going to work, going about their daily business, making plans for the day.”
Overall, the attacks in Dnipro, Chernihiv and Kremenchuk killed at least 19 people Thursday, according to a report by Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi.
Zelensky responded to the Dnipro attack by urging Ukraine’s international partners to increase pressure on Moscow. Earlier in October, the United States temporarily eased sanctions enforcement in order to allow for increased Russian diesel exports under an agreement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The European Union also removed Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from its sanctions list in September.
“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?” Zelensky wrote on X.
