Ukrainian officials say five people were killed and 67 others were wounded when a Russian drone hit a shopping mall in Pavlohrad, a city in Dnipropetrovsk region.
Shops and vehicles were hit in the daylight attack which took place “when the streets were full of people”, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said.
Two other shopping malls – in the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Sumy – were targeted by Russian air strikes earlier this week, according to Ukrainian media.
Russia reported a Ukrainian seaborne drone attack on the resort city of Sochi overnight on Wednesday, in which 28 people were wounded, as well as three more deaths blamed on Ukrainian attacks.
A full-scale war has been raging between Russia and Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion more than four and a half years ago.
A new peacemaking effort by envoys sent by US President Donald Trump at the weekend appears to have yielded few concrete results, after talks in Moscow with Putin and in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Images released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine show firefighters directing water hoses at burning vehicles amid clouds of smoke on a street in Pavlohrad.
In a Telegram post, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said of the 67 people injured, eight are children.
Zelensky offered his condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in Thursday’s attack.
“The Russians used drones to kill people who were simply standing near shopping centres,” Ukraine’s president said in his statement.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the drone attack a “tactic of coercion”. “Russia believes that relentless attacks on civilians can exhaust Ukrainians and force Ukraine into concession,” he said.
Pavlohrad, a logistics hub near the central city of Dnipro, has come under heavy attack previously, with two people killed in an attack on warehouses there last month.
Ukrainian officials say a Russian drone attack on a mall in Sumy on Wednesday killed two people and wounded 20. On Thursday, Russian aerial bombing reportedly injured eight people in Sumy, including three children.
In Zaporizhzhia, capital of the region of the same name which was partially annexed by Russia soon after the invasion, a shopping mall was almost completely destroyed on Monday, its owners reported.
However, it was closed at the time and there were no immediate reports of casualties.
One of the bloodiest attacks on a shopping centre came last month, when Ukrainian officials say Russian drones killed at least 16 people and injured 130 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.
