A single jet-powered Russian drone turned a busy platform in Dnipro into a scene of carnage late on Thursday morning. Regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha put the death toll at 14, with at least as many people hurt, a young boy of eleven among them. Several of the wounded were said to be in grave condition.
The train standing at the platform was due to leave for Zaporizhzhia, roughly two hours to the south, and a commuter service was parked alongside it. Ukraine’s air force said four such drones approached the city at around 11 a.m.; air defences downed three, but one slipped through.
What makes the toll harder to bear is that a warning had gone out. Ukrzaliznytsia, the state railway, said staff cleared the waiting train roughly ten minutes before impact, walking through it car by car, yet a crowd stayed on the platform despite the heightened alert. Railway chief Oleksandr Pertsovsky said that, unfortunately, “a large number of people” were still there.
Rescue photos show a crater torn into the concrete next to carriages with their windows blown out. President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack “horrific”, while Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi accused Moscow of “deliberately hunting civilians” and said there could be no justification for it.
Other cities were hit the same day. Up north in Chernihiv, a drone killed two girls in their teens in the city centre and left 23 others hurt. Kremenchuk saw residential blocks hit, with three dead and 32 injured.
The violence came during a fragile, US-assisted six-day truce that covers only the southern Kherson region. That pause was meant to let aid reach Oleshky, a Russian-held town cut off since the 2022 invasion, and had raised modest hopes that talks might resume. After Thursday, those hopes look thinner.
