Photo: Toss12 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
At least 14 people were killed and 14 others wounded on Thursday, October 29, when a Russian drone struck a busy platform at the railway station in Dnipro, central Ukraine, while two trains stood alongside, Ukrainian officials said. Police said the strike came at around 11 am local time.
What happened at the station
According to Ukraine’s state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, a jet-powered drone hit the platform where train No. 866, which runs from Dnipro to Zaporizhzhia, was waiting. President Volodymyr Zelensky said an ordinary commuter train and a scheduled passenger train were both at the platform when it was hit. The railway company said an elevated threat warning had been issued beforehand, but a large number of passengers were still on the platform.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down three drones during the daytime attack, while a fourth got through and struck the station. Images released by the State Emergency Service showed a large hole ripped into the platform and a train with its windows blown out.
Regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha first put the toll at 13 dead before revising it to 14. He said 13 of the wounded were taken to hospital and six were in a serious condition, among them an 11-year-old boy, with all of them suffering multiple shrapnel injuries. Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov described the attack as a tragedy for the city.
Zelensky targets sanctions relief
Calling the strike horrific, Zelensky urged the US, Europe and the G7 to keep up economic pressure on Moscow. He again criticised this month’s deal between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which eased some sanctions on Russia and allowed Russian diesel back onto world markets, asking how many such strikes Russia had carried out since the relief was granted.
Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings.
Sergiy Koretskyi, Ukrainian Prime Minister
French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia kept choosing escalation by targeting civilians and argued that far more than a local truce was needed. Moscow has always denied deliberately targeting civilians and says its strikes on Ukrainian railways are aimed at infrastructure used to move troops and equipment.
Why the railways matter
With commercial flights grounded since the 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s vast rail network carries people and freight across the country and is a main route in and out. Ukrzaliznytsia figures show that of 521 locomotives hit since the full-scale invasion began, almost 60% were struck this year, and attacks on railway facilities have risen from 1,206 in 2025 to 1,700 so far in 2026. In September alone, passengers had to be evacuated from more than 5,800 train services because of drone threats.
Other attacks and the Oleshky truce
Elsewhere on Thursday, officials said two 15-year-old girls were killed in a Russian strike on the centre of Chernihiv, and two people died when a drone hit an apartment block in Kremenchuk. In Russia, Moscow’s mayor said 613 Ukrainian drones were launched towards the region overnight, most of them shot down, and the Kremlin condemned the attacks as the capital hosted a Russia-Africa summit.
The Dnipro attack came as a fragile, recently negotiated local truce in Russian-occupied Oleshky held into its third day, with Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets travelling towards the town with a Ukrainian delegation. Zelensky said the strikes were being carried out even as the humanitarian operation there was under way, and that Russia’s signals showed it wanted the war to continue.
