Five dead and 67 injured after a Russian attack on a shopping center in Ukraine

Five people were killed and another 67 were injured on Thursday after a Russian drone hit a shopping center in Pavlohrad, in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. Eight children are among the injured. The attack occurred during the day, when the area was crowded, and the shops and several vehicles were engulfed in flames.

The State Emergency Service published footage of firefighters working to extinguish the fires. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed condolences to the victims’ families and accused Russia of attacking civilians. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the strike as a “tactic of coercion.”

The attack comes amid an intensification of strikes on shopping centers in Ukraine. An attack on a shopping center in Sumy left two people dead and 20 injured on Wednesday, while a similar facility in Zaporizhzhia was almost completely destroyed on Monday, with no casualties reported.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities announced Ukrainian drone attacks on the city of Sochi and the Belgorod region, resulting in casualties. The strikes continued as diplomatic efforts supported by U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys produced few concrete results.