Russian forces struck the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro with ballistic missiles and attacked the Nikopol district with FPV drones on 18 June, killing two people and injuring 15, regional officials said. The strikes hit a private business in Dnipro and homes across Nikopol over the morning and afternoon.
In Dnipro, a man was killed and 11 people were wounded when a missile hit the enterprise, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration head Oleksandr Hanzha said. Eight of the wounded were taken to hospital in moderate condition, and one was treated at home, he added.
The Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office said the city was hit by a missile strike, preliminarily with ballistic missiles, and that investigators had opened criminal proceedings under Article 438 of Ukraine's criminal code, which covers violations of the laws of war. Ukrainian prosecutors open such proceedings after most strikes on the country.
In the Nikopol district, Russian forces attacked with FPV drones during the morning and afternoon, killing a man and wounding four others, Hanzha reported. Private houses and vehicles were damaged.
A month of strikes on Dnipro
The attack follows a run of strikes on the city this month. Russian drones damaged the House of Organ and Chamber Music, a college, and a school in Dnipro on 15 June, injuring one person, in an overnight barrage that also set the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra alight and killed five rescue workers in Kharkiv.
On 2 June, Russia fired one of the largest aerial salvos of its war on Ukraine, and Dnipro absorbed the deadliest single strike of that night — 12 killed and 35 injured, among them a State Emergency Service rescuer killed when a second strike hit the impact site as crews worked.
Nikopol under FPV fire
Nikopol sits across the Dnipro River from Russian-occupied Enerhodar and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and faces near-daily shelling and FPV drone attacks. An FPV drone struck a city bus in central Nikopol on 7 April, killing three people and wounding 12 as the vehicle pulled into a stop.
The Institute for the Study of War has assessed that Russian forces have built deliberate civilian targeting into their drone operations in southern Ukraine, a pattern the UN has confirmed as crimes against humanity, with command responsibility traced to the Kremlin.
