Russia’s War on Ukrainian Civilians: 2026’s Devastating Toll
It is 9:50 in the morning in Nikopol. A covered market — the kind where people buy bread and vegetables and stop to chat with someone they know. At that moment, Russia strikes. Five people are killed. Among the wounded, a fourteen-year-old girl in critical condition. A second strike hits the same site minutes later, as if to finish the job.
This was April 4, 2026.
That same day, overnight Russian strikes injured a five-month-old baby and a six-year-old boy in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. A woman was killed by a drone on a road in Donetsk. A child was wounded in the Kyiv region. Emergency power outages swept across multiple regions. By the end of the day, sixteen Ukrainian civilians were dead. Ninety-four injured.
I keep coming back to the market. Because a market at ten in the morning is about as ordinary as life gets. People doing what people do. And that is exactly the point.
The scale of what is happening
The UN documented at least 161 Ukrainian civilians killed and 757 injured in January 2026 alone. Long-range drones — Shaheds, some now fitted with Starlink satellite guidance to track moving civilian targets — caused the single highest share of those casualties. But UN figures, as I have noted before, are conservative. They capture only what can be verified under strict evidentiary standards. The real toll is higher.
The UK Government told the OSCE in February 2026 that UN-verified civilian casualties for all of 2025 were up 31% on 2024, and 70% on 2023. People aged sixty and above accounted for over 45% of civilians killed in frontline areas — disproportionate to their 25% share of the population. The UN confirmed 2025 was the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since 2022: 2,514 killed, 12,142 injured. At least 763 children have been killed since the full-scale invasion began. (There are many more unable to be verified in now occupied areas – the toll is likely to be vastly greater – LINK.)
These are not abstractions. They are people with names, addresses, and morning routines.
January 2026: The 2026 record begins
January 2. A Russian missile almost completely destroys a residential apartment block in Kharkiv. Among the dead are believed to be a mother and her three-year-old child. Twenty-eight others are wounded. That same day: three people killed in a drone attack on Odesa, two more in Sloviansk, six killed in a drone strike on a train in Kharkiv Oblast, and additional casualties in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts — all on a single day.
January 3. Nine missiles and 165 Shahed-type drones overnight. A Kyiv medical centre is struck. A patient is killed. Three others injured. An American-owned vegetable oil plant in Dnipro is also hit, spilling 300 tonnes of oil into the environment.
January 4. Three people killed in a Russian drone strike in Mykolaivka, Donetsk Oblast. A separate strike kills one person in Kyrykivka, Sumy Oblast.
January 8–9. Russia launches 242 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv. Four civilians killed, twenty-five injured. A paramedic is killed in a deliberate “double-tap” strike — a second attack timed to hit first responders already at the scene — with four other emergency personnel wounded alongside him. Debris falls on a children’s playground in the Darnytskyi district. Residential buildings in Pechersk and Desnianskyi districts are destroyed. Nearly 6,000 apartment buildings lose heat in winter. The Qatar Embassy is struck by drone debris. That same night, Russia fires the Oreshnik nuclear-capable hypersonic ballistic missile at Lviv — only the second time it has deployed this weapon since 2024.
January 8. Two foreign-flagged civilian vessels are struck by Russian drones in Odesa’s port. Two people killed, eight injured. Storage facilities are damaged in subsequent attacks.
January 9. A Russian drone and missile attack damages parts of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra — Ukraine’s most revered religious landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
January 13. Russia strikes residential buildings, schools, railway infrastructure, ports, and energy facilities across eight oblasts simultaneously: Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. In Odesa alone, 46,000 families lose power.
January 27. A passenger train carrying more than 200 people in Kharkiv Oblast is hit by three Shaheds. Five killed, including eighteen passengers in the car that took the direct strike. Analysts confirm Russia had fitted the drones with Starlink satellite guidance to increase accuracy against moving targets. Zelenskyy said what needed to be said: “In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be viewed the same way — exclusively as terrorism.”
January 27. A Russian drone attack on Odesa kills at least three people and wounds twenty-three. A pregnant woman and two children are among the injured. The drones simultaneously target the power grid — during the coldest winter in years.
January 30. Russian shelling strikes a bus in central Kherson. The driver is killed. Five passengers wounded.
In the week of January 24–30 alone, Russian strikes kill at least 51 civilians across eight regions.
February 2026: Miners, maternity wards, and 19 degrees below zero
February 1. Two Shaheds hit a bus carrying coal miners leaving their shift in Ternivka, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. At least twelve miners killed. France calls it one in a series of deliberate attacks on non-combatants.
February 1. A maternity hospital is struck in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. France formally condemns it as a war crime.
February 2–3. Russia launches 450 drones and 71 missiles in what is described as the most powerful blow to Ukraine’s energy sector since the war began. The Darnytska thermal power plant — which supplies heat to over 1,100 Kyiv apartment buildings — is destroyed. It will not be repaired for two months. A Kharkiv power plant is also damaged beyond repair, leaving 300,000 people without electricity.
February 4. A nurse is killed by an FPV drone in Kherson.
February 4. A crowded market in Donetsk is shelled with cluster munitions — seven killed, fifteen wounded — while Ukrainian and Russian officials are simultaneously engaged in US-brokered peace negotiations. The timing was not coincidental.
February 6. An evacuation vehicle is attacked by Russian drones while volunteers are trying to rescue people in Beryslav. One person killed, three injured.
February 7. Russia launches over 400 drones and 40 missiles in a mass attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure across eleven oblasts. Nuclear facilities are damaged, automatically shutting down one nuclear unit. The Burshtyn and Dobrotvir thermal power plants in western Ukraine are hit. Kyiv forecasts temperatures of −19°C in the days following.
February 9. At least four people are killed, including a child. A thirteen-year-old girl is among the wounded in Dnipropetrovsk region. Another person is killed in Odesa.
February 17. Russia launches nearly 400 drones and 29 missiles affecting twelve regions. Three energy workers are killed when a drone strikes their car near the Sloviansk power plant.
February 21. Russia strikes a residential area in Sumy, destroying two buildings and damaging ten houses. Among the injured: a five-year-old child, a seventeen-year-old, and a seventy-year-old woman. Separately, two people are killed in a Kharkiv attack.
February 24. On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Russian forces launch a wave of strikes killing four people, including two civilians in Odesa.
February 26. A Shahed drone destroys the kitchen of a residential home in Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district. An elderly couple are trapped inside and can only escape when their grandson Maksym Leshchenko breaks down the door. In Zaporizhzhia that night, ten people including an eight-year-old boy are injured. A children’s educational railway in Kharkiv Oblast is also struck.
In the single week of February 7–13, Russian strikes kill at least 45 civilians across nine regions.
March 2026: Teachers, children, and a church in Lviv
March 1. Russian artillery strikes residential areas in Kherson’s Korabelnyi district. Four civilians killed. Two of them are seventy-seven-year-old women, killed at the entrance of their own building.
March 7. A Russian ballistic missile hits a five-storey apartment building in Kharkiv. Eleven dead, including two children. Fifteen others injured, including three children. Among the named victims: a primary school teacher and her nine-year-old son — a second-grade student — killed in their home. A thirteen-year-old girl and her mother.
A neighbour named Hanna arrived at the scene twenty minutes after the explosion. She told Reuters: “I thought I was going to have a stroke. It was ordinary people who lived there. What were they targeting?”
March 14. Russia strikes Ukraine with around 430 drones and 68 missiles. Six killed, fifteen injured. Five die in the Kyiv region, where residential buildings, schools, and businesses are damaged alongside energy infrastructure. In Zaporizhzhia, two civilians are killed and twenty-two injured amid 735 strikes on 43 settlements in a single day. Emergency medical workers are among the dead in Kharkiv.
March 19 onwards. The UN Security Council convenes an emergency session at European members’ request. Since March 19, at least twenty-five civilians have been killed and more than 130 injured — including children — particularly in Donetsk, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia.
March 21. A body is recovered from the rubble of a residential building struck by Russian drones in Zaporizhzhia.
March 23. At 5:20 in the morning, an FPV drone hits a commuter train eight miles from the Russian border. The crew sounds the alarm. Passengers evacuate to a shelter — except one. A sixty-one-year-old man who refuses to leave is killed. Ukrainian Railways asks passengers to please follow safety instructions. The trains, they say, will keep running.
March 23–24. The largest single-day aerial assault since the war began. Nearly 1,000 drones and missiles — 392 overnight, then 556 more in a rare daytime wave. At least seven people killed, seventy-three injured, including children, across Ukraine.
In Lviv, Shaheds strike the historic city centre, damaging the UNESCO-protected seventeenth-century Bernardine Monastery complex, including St. Andrew’s Church. Thirty-two people injured. Zelenskyy says: “Iranian Shaheds, modernized by Russia, hit a church in Lviv — it’s absolute perversion.” UNESCO issues a statement saying it is “deeply alarmed” — but declines to name Russia. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Sybiha responds publicly: “Is it a joke, @UNESCO?”
In Ivano-Frankivsk, a maternity hospital and around ten residential buildings are struck. Two people killed, four others injured, including a six-year-old child.
In Zhytomyr, a twelve-year-old girl is hospitalised after a strike on the city centre.
In Poltava, a hotel and residential buildings are burning. Two dead, eleven injured.
In Dnipro, a drone strikes a fourteen-storey residential building. Nine injured, including an eighteen-month-old boy.
In Vinnytsia, at least one person is killed and thirteen others injured.
In Kherson, a man is killed in his own home.
March 29. A Russian glide bomb hits Kramatorsk. Three killed, including a thirteen-year-old boy. Thirteen others wounded. Multi-storey residential buildings are damaged.
April 2026: The Easter escalation
April 2. Russian forces strike Druzhkivka in Donetsk region with four FAB-250 aerial bombs, injuring nine civilians.
April 2. In the Kherson region, one person is killed and sixteen others injured in Russian attacks.
April 3. Russian forces attack a minibus in Kherson with a drone — five people injured. In Kharkiv, five people including an infant are injured in overnight attacks. Russia then strikes Kharkiv with four ballistic missiles, damaging residential buildings and injuring a woman. A Russian drone strikes a shopping centre in central Sumy, injuring two people. Four border communities in Chernihiv region are attacked with FPV drones. One person is killed and another wounded in the Kyiv region.
April 3. Russian forces drop four FAB-250 aerial bombs with cluster munitions on a residential area of Kramatorsk between 6:17 and 6:25 p.m. Four people killed: a sixteen-year-old boy who dies in hospital from his injuries; a husband and wife aged seventy-one and sixty-eight; and a forty-five-year-old woman. Multiple houses and two administrative buildings are destroyed. Cluster munitions are banned by over 100 countries due to their indiscriminate nature. Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin: “The Russians are destroying everything they can reach.”
April 3. Russia strikes Kharkiv at least twenty times with explosive drones. Two people later die in hospital. A drone strikes a bus in Kherson, leaving the driver seriously wounded and at least eight passengers hurt. Russian attacks on Kherson Oblast that day kill one person and injure twenty-five others.
April 3. A Russian guided aerial bomb strikes an apartment block in Sumy’s northern district. One person killed.
April 3–4. Zelenskyy describes what is unfolding as an “Easter escalation” — Russia deliberately intensifying its bombardment in the days before Catholic Easter. More than 500 drones and dozens of missiles. Sixteen civilians killed across Ukraine, ninety-four injured. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Sybiha says: “This is how Moscow responds to Ukraine’s Easter ceasefire proposals — with brutal attacks.”
April 4. The market in Nikopol. Five killed — three women and two men. A fourteen-year-old girl in critical condition among the wounded. A second strike hits the same site shortly after, injuring two more men. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office calls it yet another Russian war crime. A day of mourning is declared in Nikopol.
April 4. Overnight strikes on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast injure a five-month-old baby, a six-year-old boy, and a forty-one-year-old woman as fires blaze through neighbourhoods.
April 4. A Russian drone strikes an apartment block in Sumy during a mass nighttime attack. Thirteen people injured, including a fifteen-year-old girl.
April 4. A Russian drone strikes a civilian car on the Kostyantynivka–Druzhkivka road in Donetsk. One woman killed, another wounded.
April 4. One civilian killed and eight wounded, including a child, in the Kyiv region. Emergency power outages triggered across several regions.
April 5. In the twenty-four hours to April 5, Russian attacks kill at least nine civilians and injure at least ninety-five across Ukraine. In Donetsk Oblast, one killed and two injured. In Kherson Oblast, two killed and thirteen injured. In Chernihiv Oblast, one killed by a long-range Shahed strike. In Kharkiv Oblast, eleven injured including an eleven-year-old girl. Zaporizhzhia Oblast is struck 887 times by drones, rockets, and artillery in a single day. A woman injured in Russian shelling of a public transport stop in Kherson’s Korabelnyi district on April 4 dies from her wounds. A civilian car strikes a Russian mine in Kherson, injuring one man. Russian drones attack Naftogaz gas facilities in Poltava and Sumy overnight. 169 people — including 139 children — are evacuated from frontline areas.
The human safari
Alongside these mass strikes, something more intimate and more sinister is happening in Kherson and surrounding districts. Human rights investigators call it a “human safari.”
Russia deploys an estimated 1,200 to 1,400 FPV drones every single day. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 45 drone strikes in Kherson’s Antonivka and Dniprovskyi districts appearing to deliberately target civilians. Russian military-affiliated Telegram channels post videos of attacks on people going about their lives — riding bicycles, driving to work, walking their dogs, boarding buses, being evacuated in clearly marked ambulances — often captioned: “Any movement of motor vehicles will be considered a legitimate target.” Russian drone operators have declared these areas “red zones” on publicly posted maps.
89% of all FPV casualties occur in Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Anastasia Pavlenko is twenty-three years old. A drone chases her on her bicycle for 300 metres before dropping a grenade, injuring her neck, leg, and ribs. The Russian Telegram post about the attack is captioned: “This character was accurately eliminated.”
November 2025. A Russian drone strikes a civilian car, killing a woman and her six-year-old child.
November 4, 2025. Two civilians and their dog are killed by a drone while walking under a white flag. A war crimes investigation is opened.
February 4, 2026. A nurse killed by FPV drone in Kherson.
February 6, 2026. An evacuation vehicle attacked in Beryslav. One volunteer killed, three injured.
A rescue worker explains what it is like to do his job now: “We can’t safely respond to emergencies. When we get emergency calls, we contact the military to see if there are any drones in the area before we dispatch.”
Between May and December 2024 alone, at least twenty-one medical staff were injured in drone attacks in Kherson.
(note: since first writing this – as of April 2026 there are multiple FPV drone strikes on civlians in Kherson EVERY DAY).
The systematic destruction of healthcare
Russia has carried out 2,591 attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities since the full-scale invasion began, according to Physicians for Human Rights. That includes 1,389 hospitals and clinics damaged or destroyed, 235 ambulance attacks, 359 deaths among medical workers, 379 injuries to medical staff, and 94 attacks specifically targeting the maternal health system.
Attacks on healthcare increased by nearly 20% in 2025 compared to 2024. Shelling of medical warehouses tripled. MSF has been forced to abandon seven hospitals and more than forty medical locations since 2022. Two-thirds of health workers report that power outages have disrupted surgeries, dialysis, and maternity care.
As of January 2026, 703 of the more than 2,500 damaged medical facilities have been restored. That means nearly 1,800 have not.
The erasure of culture
By March 2026, UNESCO has verified damage to 523 cultural sites. More than 700 religious sites have been damaged. 200 churches have been fully destroyed. More than seventy religious leaders killed. Seven million cultural artefacts lost. Five million archival documents from Ukraine’s National Archival Fund are now under occupation.
The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and Saint Sophia Cathedral — both UNESCO World Heritage Sites — were struck in June 2025. The Lviv Bernardine Monastery in March 2026. Odesa’s Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral before that. Russia is not accidentally hitting these places. It is erasing them.
What you can do
The people behind every one of these incidents — the teachers, miners, nurses, grandmothers at their doorsteps, children on bicycles, commuters on trains — are the same people our medical teams and humanitarian partners work alongside and care for every day. They are not statistics. They are patients, neighbours, and survivors who need medical supplies, emergency care, and the knowledge that the world has not looked away.
If this record moves you, please consider supporting our work. Every donation funds the medical equipment and humanitarian aid that keeps people alive in a country where going to the market, catching a train, or cycling home has become an act of courage.
Donate HERE.
Because bearing witness is not enough. We have to act.
Sources: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; UK Government statement to the OSCE, February 2026; Physicians for Human Rights; Human Rights Watch; WHO; Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office; Kyiv Independent; Reuters; UNESCO; Donetsk Regional Military Administration; Ukrainian Air Force.
