A Russian drone strike has killed at least 14 people on a crowded rail platform in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and five in daytime strikes on other cities, even as a local truce in Kherson raised cautious hopes for a resumption of diplomacy.
Two teenagers were killed on a central street in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine and three people were killed in a strike on an apartment building in the central city of Kremenchuk.
"Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings," Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi said on Telegram.
"There is no justification for this terror, and there never can be."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, described the attacks as "very cruel".
He said the attacks were "deliberate when everyone expects de-escalation steps. Russia is showing how it really feels about all this."
Zelenskiy said Ukraine had intelligence "about preparations by the Russians of new ballistic missile strikes. We need the means to take out all this Russian evil. We are expecting relevant decisions."
Russia had made clear that a six-day humanitarian truce brokered with US help applied only to south Ukraine's Kherson region, to enable humanitarian relief to reach the Russian-held town of Oleshky, marooned in a war zone since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in early 2022.
The Ukrainian state rail company Ukrzaliznytsia said a jet-powered drone had struck a platform at Dnipro's main station where a commuter train was preparing to depart for the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia.
Images posted by Zelenskiy showed bodies strewn across the ground as rescuers rushed the wounded away on stretchers.
In Chernihiv, in addition to the two dead, 23 people were wounded in a drone attack on a busy downtown street.
"Ordinary, peaceful people were attacked who were just going to work, going about their daily business, making plans for the day," Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, head of the city's military administration, said.
In Kremenchuk, the strike on the housing block killed three people and wounded 15, the regional governor said.
In the capital Kyiv, Russian forces attacked with ballistic missiles late on Thursday, hitting warehouses and triggering a fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
Klitschko said emergency services were headed to the scene on the east side of the Dnipro River.
