At least 4 killed as Russia launches fresh overnight airstrikes on Ukraine

At least four people were killed as Russia launched fresh aerial attacks on Ukraine between Thursday night and Friday morning, regional officials have said.

In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak said that a 52-year-old man was killed and two more people were injured as Russian drones struck the city of Pavlohrad and surrounding villages overnight. Ukrainian Railways confirmed that the victim was a train driver who was killed when Russia struck an electric locomotive.

A separate Russian strike on Friday morning then targeted the city of Kamianske, also in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a man and a woman, Lysak added.

The strikes are the second deadly attack on the Dnipropetrovsk region over the past day, with a drone attack in the early hours of Thursday killing one person in the regional capital Dnipro and injuring 10 more across the region.

In the neighbouring Zaporizhzhia region, Russia attacked the village of Stepnohirsk with guided bombs, sparking fires in several apartment blocks and killing a 64-year-old man, Zaporizhzhia Governor Ivan Fedorov said.

A further four people were also injured in an overnight strike on the city of Chuhuiv in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Mayor Halyna Minayeva said.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had launched 35 drones at the country overnight, primarily at “frontline areas in the east”, with air defences intercepting 11 of the drones over northern and eastern Ukraine and six more failing to reach their targets. Strikes were recorded by 18 drones at five locations, it added.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had downed 67 Ukrainian drones over eight regions of the country overnight, as well as 18 over annexed Crimea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

In the wake of the overnight attacks, Russian-installed authorities in Crimea announced a peninsula-wide ban on sharing footage of the aftermath of drone strikes online, citing the need “to ensure public safety in the republic and protect military and other critical facilities”.