Russian drone strike on Dnipro train station kills at least 14

Dnipro — A Russian jet-powered drone struck a crowded platform at the main railway station in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday, killing at least 14 people and wounding at least 14 others, including an 11-year-old boy, according to Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha. The attack hit one of the busiest pieces of civilian infrastructure in the country — a passenger train bound for Zaporizhzhia was standing at the platform when the drone came down.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a "horrific" attack, telling allies it demanded a response, The Japan Times reported. He said Russia had used a drone against a platform where a regular commuter train and a regular passenger train were standing, and renewed his call for further US, European and G7 sanctions on Moscow.

Zelensky also aimed his criticism at Washington, repeating his objections to the deal struck this month between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that eased some sanctions and allowed the US to import Russian diesel — an arrangement Kyiv argues puts money back into Moscow's war economy, the BBC reported. Russia's military has not publicly commented on the Dnipro strike; Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians and says its attacks on railways are aimed at infrastructure used to move military personnel and equipment.

The economics of that campaign are hardening. Of the 521 locomotives hit since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, almost 60 per cent were struck this year, according to Ukrzaliznytsia figures supplied to AFP. Overall attacks on railway facilities have risen from 1,206 in 2025 to 1,700 so far this year. Railway chief Oleksandr Pertsovsky said an elevated threat level had been announced in Dnipro before the strike, but a large number of people remained on the platform.

Elsewhere on Thursday, two 15-year-old girls were killed and at least 25 people injured in a missile attack on the centre of Chernihiv, officials said, while three people were killed and 28 injured when drones hit residential buildings and a school in Kremenchuk. A day of mourning has been declared in Chernihiv and Dnipro for Friday. The strikes landed even as a fragile local ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky held into a third day, with Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets saying he had set out with a delegation towards the city.

The immediate test is political: whether Zelensky's demand for new sanctions gains traction in Washington and European capitals, or whether the Trump-Putin diesel arrangement survives its bloodiest week of scrutiny yet. Friday's mourning ceremonies in Dnipro and Chernihiv will keep the pressure on.