Dozens killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine, Dnipro worst hit

At least 26 people have been killed across Ukraine in Russian attacks, officials said, as Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone attacks.

Later Tuesday, the death toll from an early morning Russian missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro had risen to 17, local authorities said. Strikes were reported overnight in several areas of Ukraine as well as in Moscow.

The attacks are the latest in a series of intensifying hostilities as the efforts of the United States to broker a ceasefire have stalled, with Russia appearing eager to take advantage while the conflict between Israel and Iran dominates global attention.

A Russian attack on a village in Sumy killed an eight-year-old boy and two adults and injured three others, the military administration of the region said.

Drone strikes also wounded five people in Kharkiv and four others in the Dnipropetrovsk region, local authorities said.

The attacks came a day after a “massive” missile and drone strike on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, killed at least 10 people.

“The strike took the lives of people from different families,” the military administration said on Telegram regarding the Sumy attack. “They all lived on the same street. They went to sleep in their homes. But Russian drones interrupted their sleep – forever.”

Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said 17 residents of the central city of Dnipro were killed and 279 people, including children, were wounded. In the nearby town of Samar, an attack killed two people and injured 14, he said.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said the strikes on Dnipro were “a rejection of peace”.

“While leaders gather in The Hague for the NATO summit, Russia sends a message of terror and rejection of peace,” Sybiha said on social media.

He called on Kyiv’s allies to “step up pressure on Moscow” as the military alliance gathered for a summit at which members are expected to agree to boost military spending.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet US President Donald Trump to discuss support for Kyiv and the bid to secure a ceasefire.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, accused NATO of demonising Russia to justify militarisation.

Ukraine has also stepped up its drone attacks on a wide range of targets in Russia in recent months.

Russia said a Ukrainian drone had targeted a residential building in Moscow overnight, wounding two people, including a pregnant woman, and triggering a fire.

Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region, said the drone started a fire on the 17th floor of the building in the town of Krasnogorsk, west of the capital.

“About 100 people were evacuated from the building, including 30 children,” Vorobyov said, adding that the injured were receiving treatment at a hospital.

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 20 Ukrainian drones overnight, including two over the Moscow region, local news agencies reported, citing Russian Ministry of Defence data.

Russia currently occupies about a fifth of Ukraine and, since launching its invasion in 2022, claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.

Trump had promised to swiftly end the war while on his campaign trail last year, but his diplomatic attempts have not resulted in a ceasefire so far.

While Washington succeeded in bringing the two sides together for direct talks last month, little progress was made, and no meetings have taken place in the last three weeks.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive and seize more territory.