Russian strike on Zelenskyy's hometown kills 19 people

Bloomberg News on Apr 5, 2025

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The death toll from Friday’s Russian ballistic missile and drone strike on Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih has risen to 19, including nine children, mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said on Telegram.

The attack on a residential part of the central Ukrainian city, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, damaged 34 apartment buildings as well as shops, business facilities and cars, the mayor said. The victims were as young as three. At least 68 people were injured, including 40 who were hospitalized. Rescue operations were completed overnight.

The deadly strike comes at a time Ukraine’s European allies are urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to respond immediately to a U.S. proposal for a partial ceasefire that Kyiv has accepted without conditions. American officials have become increasingly frustrated by Russia’s slow-walking of U.S.-led efforts to end its three-year war.

Russia’s defense ministry, in a rare comment on a strike within Ukraine, said in a statement that it had hit “military commanders and Western instructors” meeting in a restaurant.

Earlier on Friday, at least five people were killed and 34 injured in a drone attack on Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast.

Ukraine’s Air Defense said it downed 51 out of 92 drones overnight, with damage reported in the Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Zhytomir and Sumy regions. A Russian drone also hit the thermal power plant in Kherson on Friday, Zelenskiy said.

“The Russians know exactly what they’re hitting. They know these are energy facilities that should be protected from attacks under what Russia itself promised to the American side,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.

Russia’s defense ministry said its forces downed 49 Ukrainian drones across nine regions. A production facility was targeted in Saransk in the Mordovia region, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the Ukrainian border, its governor said without providing more detail. The Telegram channel Baza said that the strike was on a major fiber optic plant, causing a fire.

Power lines were damaged in a drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region, the region’s governor said.

Separately, the governor of Russia’s Samara region — about 1,000 km from Ukraine — reported that an unspecified industrial enterprise had been struck by drones, causing a fire but no fatalities. Unconfirmed posts on social media showed a series of explosions in the area.

Amid the strikes, some of Kyiv’s key Western allies are calling Russia out on its foot-dragging in negotiations being run by Washington. Moscow has been “flip-flopping” by continuing strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure despite an agreement reached last month to halt such attacks, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot at a NATO gathering of foreign ministers in Brussels.

Having promised to achieve a rapid end to Europe’s worst conflict since World War II, U.S. President Donald Trump said last weekend he was “very angry” with Putin. He later dialed back the criticism and said he believed the Russian leader will “fulfill his part of the deal.”

The Kremlin on Friday denied media reports that Putin and Trump plan a phone conversation within days.