Children among eight dead in Russian strike on Dnipropetrovsk region

Two Russian strikes in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region have killed eight people, including two children, officials say.

The station in the main city Dnipro came under attack, and several homes were hit further east in Synelnykove.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack highlighted the need for every city to have adequate air defences.

In a separate strike, Ukraine said that for the first time it had downed a long-range bomber in Russian territory.

According to Ukraine’s interior ministry, two children aged six and eight were among six people killed when private homes were targeted by Russian strikes on the town of Synelnykove.

In the regional capital Dnipro another two people were killed and 16 were wounded when a five-storey building was hit. The ministry added that rescue services were continuing to search the rubble and warned that the number of victims would rise.

Ukraine has for months warned that it is running low on weapons capable of bringing down Russian missiles and drones, and Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has spoken of an “urgent, critical need” for fresh military aid.

However, the air force in Kyiv declared that it had brought down a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber that was being used to fire supersonic Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Unverified video showed a plane on fire spiralling out of control to the ground.

Stavropol regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov said only that the plane had crashed in a Russian field some distance north of the main city and two pilots had been found alive. A third crew member was killed and rescue services were looking for a fourth.

Ukrainian air force chief Lt Gen Mykola Oleschuk said Russia had fired six Kh-22 cruise missiles overnight and two of them had been destroyed for the first time.