Three killed including 17-year-old girl as Putin military hits Ukraine city with mass drone attack

Five children were injured including one fatally as Vladimir Putin’s military hit the Ukraine city of Dnipro with a mass drone attack, say civic chiefs.

Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, said 30 people had been injured, including five children in the drone strike on Wednesday evening.

Mayor Borys Filatov said at least 15 homes had been damaged, as well as a student residence, an educational institution and a food processing plant.

Pictures posted online showed a large blaze and firefighters working at the scene well into the night, as well as gutted vehicles and buildings with smashed windows and damaged facades.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said: “ It was a difficult night in Dnipro—a Russian drone strike hit the city.

“They targeted ordinary residential buildings, ordinary civilian infrastructure. The rubble is still being cleared. Currently, 16 people are in city hospitals; in total, 28 people were injured, including 4 children.

“ All of them are receiving assistance. Tragically, three people were killed by this Russian strike, among them a girl, Veronika—she was only 17 years old.”

More than 2,520 children have been killed or injured in Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, United Nations children’s organisation UNICEF said in February, with the real death toll likely to be higher that this UN-verified figure.

It stressed that there had been a 50 per cent increase in child casualties in 2024 compared to 2023.

“No place is safe. Schools, maternity wards and children’s hospitals have all been affected by attacks,” it added.

“Overall, some 780 health facilities and more than 1,600 schools have been damaged or destroyed, according to UN-verified data.”

In northeastern Kharkiv region, governor Oleh Syniehubov said a Russian missile attack injured two people in the town of Izium.

The town was captured by Russian troops in the early days of the February 2022 invasion, but was retaken by Ukrainian forces later in the year.

The Ukrainian air force said on Thursday that Russia launched five missiles and 75 drones during an overnight attack.

The air force shot down 25 drones with another 30 not reaching their targets, likely due to electronic warfare countermeasures, it said.

Russian air defence systems destroyed or intercepted 71 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions overnight, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

Most of the drones - 49 - were downed in Kursk region where Ukrainian forces seized a swathe of land last summer but have been pushed back, others - in Oryol, Ryazan, Bryansk, Vladimir and Tula regions, it added.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian ministers have arrived in Paris to meet US and European allies, said the head of Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, who is also a part of the delegation.

“We are working on important issues for the security of Ukraine and the whole of Europe,” Andriy Yermak added about the meetings planned on Thursday with representatives from the US, France, Germany and Britain.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff, are expected to hear European concerns about Russia amid US attempts to arrange an elusive ceasefire in Ukraine more than three years after Russia invaded Ukraine.

European leaders have grown more concerned as Donald Trump has made diplomatic gestures to Putin and applied pressure on Ukraine President’s Mr Zelensky, including branding him a ‘dictator’ and bizarrely accusing Kyiv of starting the conflict.

“I’m just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives,” Trump told reporters on Sunday.

But Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Monday he hoped Trump and his administration would see that Putin was “mocking their goodwill” following Moscow’s deadly missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy and its feet dragging on a ceasefire.

Putin’s military is reported to be massing troops near Ukraine’s border close to Sumy for a new spring offensive.