The BRICS TimesRussia unleashed a wave of deadly strikes across Ukraine hitting apartment buildings in Dnipro and a civilian minibus in Zaporizhzhia killing at least six people and wounding dozens more, as President Zelensky demanded urgent action from European allies.
Dnipro bears the heaviest toll in overnight Russian assault
Russia hammered multiple Ukrainian cities overnight leaving at least six people dead and dozens wounded. The hardest hit was Dnipro, a major eastern city, where apartment blocks took direct fire from Russian missiles.
The first strike on a residential building in Dnipro killed four people and wounded 27 others. Oleksandr Ganzha head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration confirmed the death toll via Telegram. A second strike on another apartment block followed shortly after, killing one more person and wounding seven.
“The Russians hit the same residential neighbourhood as the one targeted overnight,” Ganzha said.
The city’s mayor, Borys Filatov, revealed that Dnipro’s deputy mayor narrowly escaped death in one of the strikes.
Civilian minibus attacked in Zaporizhzhia
Further south, in the Zaporizhzhia region, a Russian drone slammed into a civilian minibus killing one person and wounding four. Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional administration, shared the news on Telegram.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, claimed it had “launched a massive strike” against Ukrainian military infrastructure over the previous 24 hours.
The fallout from the barrage even reached Romania, a NATO and EU member state sharing a border with Ukraine where a drone crashed and forced authorities to evacuate more than 200 residents.
Zelensky calls for stronger European response
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky responded with fury demanding that European partners take swift and decisive action in the face of relentless Russian attacks on civilians.
“Every such strike should serve as a reminder to our partners that the situation requires immediate and firm action, and the rapid strengthening of our air defence,” he said.
Zelensky also pushed the European Union to pile on even more sanctions against Russia. His appeal came just two days after EU leaders signed off on a long-delayed 20th round of sanctions targeting Russia’s banking sector and tightening curbs on Russian oil exports.
That sanctions package had been stuck in limbo for months blocked by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who lost power two weeks ago. The EU also greenlit a massive 90 billion euro loan — roughly $105 billion earmarked for Ukraine to bolster its defences and fund state operations through 2026 and 2027.
Throughout the four-year war, Moscow has consistently denied targeting civilians.
Ukraine retaliates striking deep inside Russian territory
Kyiv has been ramping up its own counterstrikes against Russia in recent months hitting energy infrastructure and civilian areas. Ukrainian drones struck across multiple Russian border regions over the past 24 hours.
In Russia’s Kursk region which borders Ukraine, one person was injured in a drone attack. Governor Alexander Khinshtein announced the news on the Russian state-backed messaging app Max.
In the neighbouring Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported that a woman was killed and a man seriously wounded when a drone struck their car. A separate drone hit left a tractor driver wounded.
In a striking development a Ukrainian drone hit a high-rise apartment building in Yekaterinburg, a major industrial city deep inside Russia more than a thousand miles from the Ukrainian border. Local governor Denis Pasler confirmed the strike but said no one was seriously hurt.
Front line shifts as peace talks stall
On the battlefield, Russian forces claimed to have seized the village of Bochkove in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
On the diplomatic front, efforts to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II remain completely deadlocked. United States-led mediation efforts have been sidelined since a fresh conflict broke out in the Middle East in February.
