The death toll from a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region has risen to 22, officials said, as Ukraine’s top commander claimed the military has effectively halted Russia’s offensive in the northeastern Sumy region.
"Unfortunately, the number of victims of missile attacks on Dnipro has increased," said Serhiy Lysak, the head of the regional military administration.
The number of wounded has also risen to more than 300 people, the officials added.
Russian missile strikes on June 24 left over dozens of educational and medical facilities in the region damaged. It had also targeted a passenger train departing from the regional center, Dnipro.
Bordering Ukraine's war-torn Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya regions, the city of Dnipro is one of the country's key hubs for internally displaced people and volunteers.
"Everything was shattered... There were so many people that even the train conductor had to carry someone's baby," a passenger from the damaged train told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service shortly after the attack.
UN human rights monitors described the consequence of the Russian attack as a “foreseeable” tragedy.
“Ballistic missiles, when used in densely populated areas, cause predictable and widespread harm to civilians, as demonstrated by these recent attacks,” said Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
“The timing alone made the high number of civilian casualties entirely foreseeable,” she added.
Throughout Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine, the country's leadership has continuously denied targeting civilian infrastructure.
On June 26, Russian military forces conducted close to 60 shelling attacks in Ukraine's Sumy region, local officials said.
Months after countering a surprise Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Russian forces have repeatedly attacked villages and military positions in the region, using continuous shelling to support their ground assault.
On June 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 23 percent of all Russian frontline shelling is being directed at the Sumy region.
Speaking at the international economic forum in St Petersburg on June 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the Russian military was carving out a "buffer zone" in Sumy region.
"We don't have the task of taking it, but in principle I don't rule it out," Putin said. "Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours," he added.
A week later, Oleksandr Syrskiy, Ukraine's top military commander said Russian offensive in Sumy region has been stopped. According to his Telegram statement released on June 26, the front line area in the region has been stabilized.
"Our units are successfully using active defense tactics and liberating Ukrainian land in the Sumy region," Syrskiy said.
He added some 50,000 Russian troops had been tied up in the area, including Russia's elite airborne forces and marine corps.
Separately, Zelenskyy said Ukraine and Russia exchanged an unspecified number of prisoners on June 26, in the latest in a series of exchanges.
""Most of them had been held captive since 2022," Zelenskyy added.
