DNIPRO, Ukraine -- Deadly Russian air strikes pounded Ukraine's eastern city of Dnipro for more than 12 hours overnight on April 25, marking the fourth consecutive day of attacks on the country's key volunteer hub.
Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said at least five people were killed and nearly four dozen were wounded in the strikes, as local emergency services searched for people under the rubble of a residential building damaged in the attack.
Hanzha added that five children were among the injured, and later reported that 12 hours after the start of the attack late on April 24, a new drone strike hit another residential building in the city.
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Postcard From The Edge: Hope, Fear, Fatigue, And Resilience In Wartime Dnipro"Russia's tactics remain unchanged -- attack drones, cruise missiles, and a significant number of ballistic missiles," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X, as the country's military forces reported that more than 600 drones and 47 missiles were launched on Ukraine overnight.
"Most targets are civilian infrastructure in cities," he said, adding that the strikes also caused casualties in the Chernihiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv regions.
Dnipro has long been one of Ukraine's biggest volunteer and refugee hubs, hosting thousands of internally displaced people from the war-torn Donetsk and Luhansk regions since the beginning of Russian military aggression in 2014.
It has also long been one of the most frequent targets of Russian strikes, as more than four years of full-scale war have brought Russian military forces closer to its regional borders.
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Ukrainians Fend Off Another Russian Mass Drone Attack
Speaking to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service at the scene of the aftermath on April 25, Dnipro resident Olha said the latest explosions in the city overnight were "very loud," adding that she could feel the missiles flying over her house.
Olha said she has been internally displaced twice since 2022, leaving her hometown of Vuhledar -- left largely in ruins and now occupied by Russian forces -- for Zaporizhzhya and then for Dnipro.
"We were fleeing all of this at home. We came to a safer place, as we were told. We were in Zaporizhzhya, and we felt all of this there. We then came to Dnipro, and it is all the same."
Elsewhere, local officials reported Russian overnight strikes damaged critical infrastructure in the Kyiv region and a Panama-flagged ship in Ukraine's major southern port city of Odesa.
On the other side of the border, in Russia's fourth-largest city, Yekaterinburg -- around 1,700 kilometers from the front line -- Governor Denis Pasler reported that a Ukrainian drone hit an apartment building, mostly causing minor injuries.
While there was no immediate comment from Ukrainian military forces, over the past weeks Kyiv has stepped up its attacks deep inside Russia, targeting its oil infrastructure from the Gulf of Finland to the Caspian Sea.
RFE/RL cannot independently verify Pasler's report of a drone attack in Yekaterinburg, but if confirmed, it would be the first time the city has been targeted since Russia launched its all-out war against Ukraine in 2022.
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Zelenskyy In Saudi Arabia For Defense Talks As Russia Continues To Pound UkraineMeanwhile, Zelenskyy continued his international visits, traveling from Saudi Arabia to Azerbaijan, where he met President Ilham Aliyev.
A readout of Zelenskyy's visit said that he also met with a group of Ukrainian military experts who had been deployed to Azerbaijan to share air defense expertise.
"We have unique security expertise that can benefit other nations," Zelenskyy's post on X said. "We are already working along three directions: the Middle East and the Gulf region, the European Union, and substantive work with Azerbaijan."
Having previously secured a number of bilateral agreements with European countries, Kyiv has sought to bring its battle-proven technologies and military expertise to countries targeted by Iranian strikes since the beginning of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
Separately, during joint comments to the press with Aliyev, Zelenskyy suggested that Azerbaijan could host peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine if Moscow is ready to resume the stalled talks.