Five people died and 67 were wounded when a Russian drone struck a shopping mall in Pavlohrad, officials in Ukraine said, marking the latest attack on civilian retail centres in recent days. The strike hit shops and parked vehicles in daylight, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said, and regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha reported that eight of the injured were children.
President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack, saying, "The Russians used drones to kill people who were simply standing near shopping centres." Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the assault as a "tactic of coercion," arguing Moscow aims to exhaust civilians and force concessions.
Pavlohrad, a logistics hub close to the city of Dnipro, has been targeted before; Ukrainian officials said two people were killed in a warehouse strike there last month. The mall attack follows strikes on other shopping centres this week, with Ukrainian media reporting separate hits in Sumy and Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian authorities said a drone strike in Sumy killed two people and wounded 20, and aerial bombing there injured eight people, including three children. In Zaporizhzhia, owners reported a mall was almost completely destroyed on Monday but was closed at the time and no casualties were immediately reported.
Ukrainian officials also pointed to a far deadlier incident last month, when Russian drones struck a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih, killing at least 16 people and injuring 130. Attacks on shopping facilities have not been limited to government-held areas; Ukrainian forces reported strikes on malls in parts of Mariupol and Donetsk that are under Russian control.
Moscow, meanwhile, said Ukrainian seaborne drones struck the Russian resort city of Sochi overnight, wounding 28 people, and blamed Kyiv for three further deaths in separate incidents. A Russian statement said two of those injured in Sochi were children. The exchanges come as air raid alerts in Ukraine hit record highs amid sustained Russian launches, and after a weekend of diplomacy that produced few tangible results following talks by envoys sent by the US president in Moscow and Kyiv.
Rescue teams at the Pavlohrad site worked through wreckage as authorities continue to treat the injured and investigate the attack. The pattern of strikes on civilian shopping centres over successive days raises pressure on both emergency services and local communities already coping with years of sustained conflict.
