Russian artillery and aerial attacks killed at least nine people across Ukraine on Tuesday, including a child, as the war between Moscow and Kyiv continued to escalate with deadly strikes on both sides.
Ukrainian officials said the attacks targeted several regions of the country, with the southern city of Kherson suffering some of the heaviest damage. Four people were killed there after Russian shelling struck residential areas, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
Prokudin described the bombardment as “hell,” sharing images that showed bodies lying on the streets and injured civilians receiving emergency treatment.
The strike in Kherson followed another deadly incident earlier in the day when a Russian drone attacked a passenger bus in the frontline city of Nikopol, killing four people and leaving several others wounded.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack, accusing Russia of deliberately targeting civilians.
“The Russians continue their deliberate terror against people in Nikopol and other cities and communities near the front,” Zelensky said.
Images released by regional authorities showed a yellow minibus torn apart by the blast, with debris scattered across the roadway. Later the same day, another strike hit a separate bus near the city, injuring five additional people.
Nikopol, which had a population of roughly 100,000 before the war, lies along the Dnipro River in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. The river has effectively become a frontline dividing Russian and Ukrainian forces in the south of the country.
Ukrainian officials have warned that the security situation in Nikopol has deteriorated in recent days as Russian forces intensify attacks on the region while attempting to push forward on the battlefield.
At the same time, authorities in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine reported casualties from Ukrainian strikes.
According to Moscow-installed officials in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, a Ukrainian drone attack struck a school and an ambulance vehicle, injuring seven schoolchildren and three adults. The attack also reportedly killed a local official.
Inside Russia, officials said a Ukrainian drone strike hit a residential building in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, killing a child born in 2014 along with two adults.
The latest exchanges come as both sides increasingly rely on long-range drones and missiles to strike targets deep behind the front lines.
Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago, Russia’s war has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and forced millions of people to flee their homes, making it the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
Recent months have seen intensified attacks on energy infrastructure and civilian areas. Moscow has sought to undermine Ukrainian morale by targeting critical facilities, while Kyiv has attempted to strike Russian energy resources and military logistics in retaliation.