"Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings," Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi said on the Telegram app.
At least 14 people were killed in Ukraine Thursday when Russia launched a sinister drone strike on a crowded train station — with horrific video showing bloodied and mangled bodies scattered across the platform.
Several others, including an 11-year-old boy, were also wounded when a Russian jet-powered drone slammed into the platform at the main railway station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, according to regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha.
A passenger train headed for the southern city of Zaporizhzhia was at one of the platforms when the drone hit, according to Ukraine’s state railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, as reported by BBC News.
Graphic video shows injured and dead bodies lying next to the train, alongside the blazing wreckage of the Iranian-made Russian Shahed drone believed to have been used in the attack.
Mangled bodies and pools of bright red blood could be seen splattered across the shrapnel-marked pavement.
Police were also seen filling black body bags while an air-raid siren wailed in the background, according to the gruesome footage.
In a separate clip, a child’s voice can be heard screaming “Daddy” in Ukrainian, according to former government advisor Anton Gerashchenko, who shared the video on X.
An elevated threat level was announced ahead of Thursday’s strike in Dnipro, “But unfortunately there were still a large number of people on the platform” when the drone struck, railway operator chief Oleksandr Pertsovsky said.
“And for what? What goal are they [the Russians] trying to achieve? I don’t understand it at all,” Svitlana Shcherbak, a 67-year-old passenger who was at the station during the strike, told Reuters.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky shared blurred-out images of the carnage in Dnipro, as he called for stronger sanctions against Russia.
“Just how many terrorist strikes has Russia carried out against our people since sanctions were lifted on certain Russian oligarchs and the Russian energy sector, rather than de-escalating?” President Zelensky wrote on X.
“It is time for new, stronger sanctions steps by the EU, the United States, and the G7,” he added, repeating his criticism of a controversial deal struck earlier this month between President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, which allowed the US to import Russian diesel.
Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian trains this year, with almost 60% of all strikes on railway infrastructure since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 occurring this year, according to figures from Ukraine’s rail company.
The Kremlin has not publicly commented on the attacks on Dnipro, but it has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilians.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, two 15-year-old girls were killed in a Russian missile attack on the northern city of Chernihiv, according to regional head Vyacheslav Chaus.
At least 25 others, including four children, were wounded, Chaus said, adding that the city would hold a day of mourning on Friday.
Another three people were killed and 28 injured in a Russian drone attack on residential buildings and a school in the central city of Kremenchuk, regional head Vitaliy Kiakivnych said.
“There is no justification for this terror, and there never can be.”
A US-brokered six-day truce in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region continues to hold, where a humanitarian mission was underway to provide relief to the Russian-held town of Oleshky, trapped behind enemy lines since the 2022 full-scale invasion.