Russian strikes in Ukraine leave at least eight dead and over a million without electricity
Russian attacks killed at least eight people and injured 60 across Ukraine, struck two shopping centres and cut power to more than a million people, Ukrainian officials said. The strikes on Friday hit nine regions. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, a 71‑year‑old woman and a 58‑year‑old man were killed and 12 people were wounded in attacks on three districts, Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported. Two people were killed in Kramatorsk, a frontline city in the Donetsk region, and two more in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
In the northwestern Volyn region, which borders Poland, a drone strike on a food‑processing facility killed one person and wounded eight, Governor Roman Romaniuk said. Drones also hit a customs terminal and set fire to about 10 trucks in the town of Kovel, located on a major road from Kyiv to Poland. In Rivne, drones struck a major shopping centre and other sites, killing one person and wounding seven, regional governor Oleksandr Koval noted. A shopping centre in Sumy, close to the front line, was also hit. Emergency service deminers were seen working at the site of an apartment building damaged during a Russian drone strike in the Rivne region on October 16, 2026.
Regarding power cuts, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said repair crews had restored electricity to more than a million people who lost it on Friday. In Volyn, about 370,000 households were left without power, with supply restored to at least 100,000 of them. The blackout could last at least 24 hours in the regional capital Lutsk, Mayor Andriy Razumovskyi said. Large parts of Rivne were also left without electricity.
Russia’s military chief told President Vladimir Putin on Friday that the military had allocated the assets needed to press its aerial campaign against Ukraine’s energy system.
On civilian toll, the United Nations said on Friday that civilian casualties in Ukraine had risen sharply. According to UN human rights monitors, at least 328 civilians were killed and 2,105 wounded in Ukraine last month, 85 percent more than in September 2025. Between January and September 2026, 2,570 civilians were killed and 15,211 wounded, almost 60 percent more than the same period the previous year and more than twice the 2024 level, the report said. “The first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years,” said Danielle Bell, head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine.