Ukraine has convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council following the latest Russian strikes on Dnipro, Chernihiv and Kremenchuk. The Ukrainian mission announced this on Friday, 30 October, via the short-message service X, according to the news agency Ukrinform. The strikes had resulted in “20 Ukrainians killed and dozens more injured”, the statement said.
The large city of Dnipro was hit hardest. There, according to the Ukrainian police, a jet-powered drone struck at around 11 a.m. on Thursday on a platform of the main railway station, where train No. 866 to Zaporizhzhia was ready to depart. Initially the authorities reported 13 dead, later 14. On Friday, a 40-year-old man succumbed to his injuries in hospital, raising the death toll to 15, as the Berliner Zeitung reports, citing the head of the regional administration, Oleksandr Hanzha. According to the report, eleven injured people were still being treated in hospitals, six of them in a serious condition, including an eleven-year-old boy.
350,000 connections without power – and in the morning the grid failed again
In addition to the railway station, the region’s energy infrastructure was severely damaged. According to the head of the regional administration, Hanzha, more than 350,000 electricity customers in Dnipro and surrounding communities temporarily lost supply as a result of the strikes on Thursday evening. Repair teams worked through the night and part of the supply was restored. On Friday morning, however, the damaged grid collapsed again on a large scale. It had not withstood the load, Hanzha explained. The energy supplier DTEK introduced emergency shutdowns on the instructions of the state grid operator Ukrenergo.
The consequences were felt throughout the city: trams, trolleybuses and the metro temporarily stopped operating, and later individual metro trains were able to run again. Water supply and other important facilities were partly switched to emergency generators. Mayor Borys Filatov called on residents to stay at home where possible and to keep sufficient food and water for several days, as the Berliner Zeitung reports, citing the city administration and DTEK.
According to the Ukrainian state railway, Dnipro station was attacked again during the night to Friday. The head of Ukrzaliznytsia, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, reported an extremely difficult night on Friday morning. Travellers were waiting to be able to continue their journeys; the railway was trying to bring them to safety and to organise alternative connections. The exact extent of the new damage was not initially known.
Two 15-year-old girls killed in Chernihiv
In the Russian drone strike on the centre of Chernihiv on Thursday, two 15-year-old girls were killed, according to Ukrinform; 37 people, including five children, required medical treatment. In Kremenchuk in the Poltava region, three people died and 28 others were injured, including three children. 30 October was declared a day of mourning for the victims of the strikes in Dnipro, Chernihiv and the Poltava region.
The strikes on Dnipro were part of a larger Russian wave of attacks. During the night to Friday, according to the Ukrainian air force, Russia deployed a total of 113 drones, four guided air-to-ground missiles and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles, including 83 jet-powered drones. Air defence reported having shot down or electronically repelled 96 drones and three of the four guided missiles. Impacts were recorded at 17 locations and falling debris at five others. According to Ukrainian military reports, the Kyiv, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions were particularly affected. The information cannot be fully independently verified. In the capital Kyiv, one person died and others were injured in a Russian missile strike; according to the news agency Reuters, warehouse buildings and residential buildings were damaged, among other things.
The Berliner Zeitung places the strikes in the context of a Russian campaign against Ukraine’s energy supply that has been ongoing since the end of September, citing analyses by the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). With winter approaching, another stress test looms for the country’s already severely damaged power grid.
Editor’s note: The information from the Ukrainian authorities and the air force cannot be independently verified. The figure of 20 deaths in the statement on the UN session refers to the three locations together; for Dnipro, the figure stands at 15 dead on Friday.
