Russian strikes across nine regions of Ukraine on Friday killed at least eight people, wounded 60 others, and cut electricity to more than one million residents, according to Ukrainian officials.
The attacks struck civilian infrastructure and commercial properties, including two shopping centres. In Kharkiv, strikes on three districts killed a 71-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man and left 12 people injured, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Frontline strikes in Kramatorsk, located in the Donetsk region, killed two people, while two additional deaths occurred in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
In northwestern Ukraine near the border with Poland, drone strikes hit multiple facilities. In the Volyn region, an attack on a food-processing plant killed one person and wounded eight, Governor Roman Romaniuk said. Drones also struck a customs terminal and ignited approximately 10 trucks in the town of Kovel, situated on a primary road linking Kyiv to Poland. In neighbouring Rivne, regional governor Oleksandr Koval said a drone attack on a major shopping centre and other locations killed one person and injured seven. Another shopping centre was hit in Sumy, near the front line.
The strikes caused severe disruptions to power networks. In Volyn, about 370,000 households lost power, with electricity later restored to at least 100,000 of them, while Mayor Andriy Razumovskyi stated that the outage could last at least 24 hours in the regional capital of Lutsk. Large sections of Rivne were also cut off. Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy reported that repair teams had restored electricity to more than one million people who lost power during the day.
On the Russian side, the military chief informed President Vladimir Putin on Friday that the armed forces had secured the assets required to sustain the aerial campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
The attacks came as the United Nations highlighted a sharp rise in civilian casualties. UN human rights monitors reported that at least 328 civilians were killed and 2,105 wounded in Ukraine last month, an 85 percent increase compared to September 2025. Between January and September 2026, 2,570 civilians were killed and 15,211 injured, nearly 60 percent higher than the same timeframe in 2025 and more than double the level recorded in 2024.
“The first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years,” said Danielle Bell, head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine.
