Russian artillery and aerial strikes across Ukraine killed at least nine people on Tuesday, officials said, including a child, while Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian mainland and occupied areas killed five people, also including a child.
The violence comes amid an intensification of long-range drone and missile strikes on infrastructure as Kyiv presses for an Easter ceasefire; Orthodox Easter falls at the end of the week.
In the south, Russian forces struck Kherson, where Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said four people were killed and several others wounded, describing the shelling as “hell.”
On the front line in Nikopol, on the Dnipro river in Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian drone hit a passenger bus, killing four people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “deliberate terror” against people in Nikopol and nearby communities. The strike ripped a yellow minibus open in a city that had about 100,000 residents before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion; Russian ground forces continue operations seeking to advance in the Dnipropetrovsk area.
A separate drone strike on another bus in Dnipropetrovsk region injured five people, Governor Oleksandr Ganzha said. Russia has increasingly targeted civilian vehicles and public transport in and around Dnipro. Overnight, another Russian drone strike in Dnipropetrovsk killed an 11-year-old boy and wounded five others, the governor reported.
Ukrainian strikes on the Russian mainland and in occupied territories killed five civilians, officials said. In Vladimir region east of Moscow, a Ukrainian drone strike killed a 12-year-old boy and his two parents. In Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia, a drone hit a school in the village of Velikaya Znamenka; the Moscow-backed governor Yevgeny Balitsky said a local official was killed while helping children escape and that five children were among six people injured. In Russian-held Kherson, Moscow-backed governor Vladimir Saldo said a Ukrainian drone strike killed a woman in her fifties.
Separately, Ukraine’s military said it struck the Ust-Luga oil terminal in Russia. Kyiv has increased attacks on Russian oil infrastructure amid concerns that an energy crisis tied to the wider regional conflict could help revive Moscow’s fuel sector after years of sanctions.
The exchanges underscore a rising tempo of long-range attacks on both sides as Kyiv seeks a pause in fighting for the Easter period.