State rail company Ukrzaliznytsia said a jet-powered Russian drone hit the platform where a regular commuter train and a regular passenger train were standing, as one train prepared to leave for the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted three jet-powered drones in the daytime attack, but a fourth evaded its defences and hit the station.
By Thursday afternoon, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said the death toll had risen to 14, with another 14 people wounded, six of them in severe condition with "multiple shrapnel wounds" — including an 11-year-old boy and a man who had both legs amputated.
"A horrific Russian strike on the railway station in Dnipro," Zelenskyy wrote on X. "The Russians launched a drone attack on a platform where an ordinary commuter train and a scheduled passenger train were standing." In his nightly video address he described the attacks as "very cruel" and "deliberate when everyone expects de-escalation steps."
Zelenskyy also pointed to the easing of Western sanctions, asking: "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?" He insisted that "sanctions against Moscow and its war machine must not be eased for as long as this Russian war continues," and warned Ukraine had intelligence "about preparations by the Russians of new ballistic missile strikes."
Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi said on Telegram: "Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings."
The Dnipro strike was the deadliest of a day of attacks across Ukraine. Five more people died in daytime strikes on two other provincial cities — Chernihiv and Kremenchuk — and a late-evening missile strike killed one person in the capital, Kyiv, just before 11 p.m., according to the city's military administration. In total, at least 20 people were killed and more than 70 injured across the country that day, local officials said.
Russia has fired drones on trains across Ukraine since the first days of its 2022 invasion, destroying hundreds of locomotives and killing several railway workers, but the Dnipro platform strike — on a crowded station in daylight — stands out for its civilian toll.
The strike came as Ukraine and Russia kept to a fragile local ceasefire in Oleshky, the ravaged city in the Kherson region under Russian occupation since 2022, where residents have faced months of food, water and medicine shortages. The truce held into a third day, with a humanitarian convoy poised to enter the city and military units clearing landmines, offering a limited chance to evacuate civilians and deliver supplies — even as the wider war continued elsewhere.
Sources: Reuters, Al Jazeera, Gulf News/AFP, Associated Press, Channels Television.