At least 5 people are killed in a large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine
[October 06, 2025]
Russia launched drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs across Ukraine
early Sunday, killing five people in a major nighttime attack that
Ukrainian officials said targeted civilian infrastructure.
Moscow fired 53 ballistic and cruise missiles and 496 drones, Ukraine's
air force said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that nine regions
were targeted.
Four people, including a 15-year-old, died in a combined drone and
missile strike on Lviv, according to regional officials and Ukraine’s
emergency service.
It was the largest aerial assault on the historic western city and
surrounding region since Russia's full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022,
according to Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the local military
administration. Earlier in the war, Lviv was seen as a haven from the
fighting and destruction farther east.
In a Telegram post, Kozytskyi said Russia launched about 140 Shahed
drones and 23 ballistic missiles across the region. At least six more
people were injured, according to a statement by Ukraine's police force.
The strike left two districts of Lviv without power and disrupted public
transportation for a few hours early Sunday, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi
reported. He added that a business complex on Lviv's outskirts caught
fire following the strike, describing it as a civilian facility unlinked
to Ukraine's war effort.
One person was also injured in the Ivano-Frankivsk region south of Lviv,
according to regional head Svitlana Onyshchuk.
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, an aerial assault killed a
civilian woman and wounded nine other people including a 16-year-old
girl, regional head Ivan Fedorov reported. He said Russia attacked with
drones and guided aerial bombs.
Fedorov said the strike destroyed residential buildings and left about
73,000 households in Zaporizhzhia and surrounding areas without power.
Russia's Defense Ministry said the overnight strikes targeted Ukraine's
“military-industrial complex" and energy facilities that supply it.
Separately, six people including a child were injured in Sloviansk, a
key city in the eastern Donetsk region that remains under Ukrainian
control, after a Russian guided aerial bomb slammed into an apartment
block, regional prosecutors said Sunday. They said Russian airstrikes on
Saturday evening damaged over two dozen residential buildings in
Sloviansk, as well as cars, shops and a cafe.
Russia blasts Ukraine's power grid as winter approaches
Zelenskyy on Sunday reiterated his call for Kyiv’s Western partners to
send additional air defenses to combat Russia’s “aerial terror.”
“Today, the Russians again targeted our infrastructure, everything that
ensures people can live a normal life. We need more protection, a rapid
implementation of all defense agreements, especially on air defense, to
make this aerial terror pointless,” he said in a Telegram post.
Ukraine has for months conducted its own long-range strikes on Russia,
many of which have targeted Moscow’s oil infrastructure and contributed
to persistent fuel shortages.
Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 32 Ukrainian drones
during the night, with at least 50 more downed during the day over
southwestern Russia.
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In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, fire and
smoke raises after a residential building was damaged during
Russia's air strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025.
(Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
Drones damaged several homes, cars and a power line in the Belgorod
region bordering Ukraine, according to local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Separately, he reported that Ukrainian shelling gravely wounded the
deputy head of a border village.
For its part, the Kremlin has ramped up attacks on Ukraine’s power
grid ahead of winter, as in previous years since the full-scale
invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Kyiv calls it an attempt to weaponize the
weather by denying civilians heat, light and running water.
Serhii Koretskyi, CEO of Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz Group, said
Sunday's attack inflicted further large-scale damage on gas
infrastructure that supplies civilians, just two days after what the
company said was the largest Russian strike on its facilities since
the all-out invasion.
Russia's goal was to deprive Ukrainians of gas, heat, and
electricity, Koretskyi was quoted as saying in a Naftogaz statement.
The company did not elaborate on the damage from the latest strike.
In his nightly address to Ukrainians on Sunday, Zelenskyy charged
that Moscow is “openly trying to destroy our civilian infrastructure
now, before winter -- our gas infrastructure, electricity generation
and transmission.”
“Unfortunately, there’s been no dignified, powerful global response
to everything that’s happening, to the ever-increasing scale and
brazenness of the strikes, he said, adding that Russian President
Vladimir Putin is "simply laughing at the West’s silence and lack of
a strong response.”
Moscow has also stepped up airstrikes on Ukraine’s railway network,
which is essential for military transport, hitting it almost daily
in the past two months. Russian drones on Saturday struck a railway
station in the northern city of Shostka, killing one and wounding
dozens.
Putin warns US against arming Kyiv
On Thursday, Putin doubled down on warnings that any supplies of
long-range weapons by the U.S. to Ukraine would badly hurt bilateral
ties.
The potential supply of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv will
signal a “qualitatively new stage of escalation, including in
relations between Russia and the U.S.,” Putin said at a forum of
international foreign policy experts in Russia’s Black Sea resort of
Sochi.
Putin's remarks followed an apparent dramatic shift in Washington’s
Ukraine policy, after U.S. President Donald Trump said late last
month that he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to
Russia.
Trump previously repeatedly called on Kyiv to make concessions to
end the war, and ended Putin’s diplomatic isolation in the West by
hosting him at a summit in Alaska on Aug. 15.
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