Russian forces struck the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro with ballistic missiles and attacked the Nikopol district with FPV drones on 18 June, killing two people and injuring 15, regional officials said. The strikes hit a private business in Dnipro and homes across Nikopol over the morning and afternoon.

In Dnipro, a man was killed and 11 people were wounded when a missile hit the enterprise, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration head Oleksandr Hanzha said. Eight of the wounded were taken to hospital in moderate condition, and one was treated at home, he added.

The Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office said the city was hit by a missile strike, preliminarily with ballistic missiles, and that investigators had opened criminal proceedings under Article 438 of Ukraine's criminal code, which covers violations of the laws of war. Ukrainian prosecutors open such proceedings after most strikes on the country.

In the Nikopol district, Russian forces attacked with FPV drones during the morning and afternoon, killing a man and wounding four others, Hanzha reported. Private houses and vehicles were damaged.

A month of strikes on Dnipro

The attack follows a run of strikes on the city this month. Russian drones damaged the House of Organ and Chamber Music, a college, and a school in Dnipro on 15 June, injuring one person, in an overnight barrage that also set the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra alight and killed five rescue workers in Kharkiv.

On 2 June, Russia fired one of the largest aerial salvos of its war on Ukraine, and Dnipro absorbed the deadliest single strike of that night — 12 killed and 35 injured, among them a State Emergency Service rescuer killed when a second strike hit the impact site as crews worked.

Nikopol under FPV fire

Nikopol sits across the Dnipro River from Russian-occupied Enerhodar and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and faces near-daily shelling and FPV drone attacks. An FPV drone struck a city bus in central Nikopol on 7 April, killing three people and wounding 12 as the vehicle pulled into a stop.

The Institute for the Study of War has assessed that Russian forces have built deliberate civilian targeting into their drone operations in southern Ukraine, a pattern the UN has confirmed as crimes against humanity, with command responsibility traced to the Kremlin.

Russian forces struck Dnipro with drones in the early hours of 15 June, damaging a cultural landmark, a college, a school, an enterprise, and infrastructure objects, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration head Oleksandr Hanzha reported via Telegram.

The attack damaged the House of Organ and Chamber Music, which is one of Dnipro's foremost cultural institutions, housed in the former St. Nicholas Cathedral — a neoclassical building with Baroque elements constructed in the early 20th century. It holds one of Ukraine's finest organs: a 30-register W. Sauer instrument built in Germany, with 2,074 pipes and a total weight of 12 tonnes. The venue hosts more than 300 concerts annually, including international festivals, and is a listed national architectural and historical landmark.

Sequence of strikes and damage

Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine warned at 01:25 of a missile approaching the city. Explosions were heard after midnight. At 02:10, Hanzha reported that one person had been injured; he later specified the victim was a 64-year-old man hospitalized in moderate condition.

An enterprise was damaged and a fire broke out at the site, Hanzha said. At 03:22, the official reported that one section of a college building had been destroyed, and that blast waves had shattered windows at a school and a cultural facility.

By 06:40, it became known that the House of Organ and Chamber Music had also sustained damage.

Air defense forces destroyed 24 Russian drones over Dnipropetrovsk Oblast during the attack, Hanzha said. Authorities called on residents not to ignore air raid alerts.

The strike on Dnipro was part of a large-scale Russian aerial attack across Ukraine overnight on 15 June. Russia launched 611 attack drones along with six Zirkon anti-ship missiles, 34 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles, and 30 Kh-101/Iskander-K cruise missiles against Ukraine overnight.

In Kyiv, at least five people were killed and 35 injured, and around 140,000 households were left without electricity after strikes hit residential areas and power infrastructure. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was set on fire — its Dormition Cathedral sustaining direct hits. In Kharkiv, five rescue workers were killed by a second Russian strike while fighting a blaze caused by an earlier attack, with at least five others wounded, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.