Eight Killed in Ukraine as Moscow Vows to Press On and Targets Civilian Sites

Russian strikes killed eight people across Ukraine on Sunday, 27 September 2026, according to national and regional authorities, a day after Moscow publicly vowed to continue the war. The deaths came amid a widening drone and missile barrage that Ukrainian officials said was deliberately aimed at civilian sites as the country braces for another difficult winter.

Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said Russian strikes hit a children's centre in the northern city of Sumy, killing three people, including a 16-year-old girl. The attack on a facility serving children drew particular attention as the conflict enters its fifth winter, with education and care infrastructure coming under increasing pressure from both missile and drone fire.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said three people had been killed in overnight strikes on the southern Zaporizhzhia region, while a separate Russian drone strike killed one man in Kyiv. Ukrainian officials characterised the pattern as deliberate, arguing that Moscow is choosing civilian targets to maximise disruption and casualties rather than military effect.

In the Odesa region, authorities said a "massive strike" on the south of the Black Sea area killed one further person. Regional head Oleg Kiper listed the damage in that area as housing, a shop, a hotel, a medical building and a grain warehouse — a cross-section of the commercial and agricultural infrastructure that has been repeatedly hit since the war began and that residents rely on for housing, tourism and food exports.

In the capital, Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitchko said a woman and two 16-year-olds had been wounded and hospitalised. The city's administration said the enemy "continues to relentlessly attack the Kyiv region with strike drones," adding that 16 sites had been damaged, including 12 houses, a warehouse and a production facility. The strikes on residential buildings in the capital region underline how frequently the war has moved into the suburbs, where air-raid alerts and debris have become a routine feature of daily life.

Zelensky used the attacks to press a broader argument about Moscow's intent. Posting on social media, he said that in the week that has just passed Russia launched more than 2,200 attack drones against Ukraine, as well as around 1,650 aerial bombs and 38 missiles of various types, "a significant number of them ballistic missiles." Taken together, he said, that volume of fire represents an escalation rather than a pause.

He added that the most recent strikes had hit two kindergartens, two schools, housing and "other civilian infrastructure" in various parts of the country, framing them as part of a sustained pattern rather than a series of isolated incidents. "If Russia were truly preparing for any real steps toward de-escalation — as it claims, particularly to American negotiators — this wave of 'shahed' terror would not be happening," he said in later comments, directly challenging claims from Moscow that it is willing to talk.

Russia's defence ministry offered a sharply different account of at least part of the campaign. It said Russian forces had bombed a Kyivstar data centre in Kyiv as well as another belonging to the Omega Telecom company, claiming the two firms were providing services to the Ukrainian army. The ministry released an image of a drone carrying the ironic message "Digital Detox", with officials confirming that the strikes were intended to disrupt internet access in Ukraine.

The disclosure is significant in itself: Moscow has not hidden that the strikes were aimed at communications infrastructure, but the public justification — that the facilities support the Ukrainian military — sits uneasily alongside the repeated denial from Russian authorities that the war is directed at civilians. Analysts of such campaigns note that degrading telecommunications is a recognised military objective, since it affects command links, coordination and, as Zelensky suggests, ordinary civilians' access to information and services at the same time.

The strikes also coincided with incremental Russian gains on the ground. The defence ministry said Russian forces had seized the border village of Khrypuny in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, an area where Moscow controls pockets of land. Russia does not formally claim the Kharkiv region as its own — unlike the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions — but it has fought there and taken territory during the war, and the Kremlin has repeatedly said it intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine.

Diplomatic efforts have not shifted that trajectory. US-led talks aimed at ending the war have failed to produce a breakthrough, and the United Nations has highlighted the growing civilian toll as the two sides become more entrenched. For Ukraine, the immediate concern is the approach of winter, when heating, power and shelter infrastructure becomes harder to repair and damaged housing is harder to live in; for Russia, the continued volume of strikes and localised advances appear to be a way to press on while talks remain stalled.

The weekend's casualties — a children's centre in Sumy, homes in the Kyiv region, housing and a medical building in Odesa, and multiple sites in Zaporizhzhia — illustrate how much of the damage continues to fall on people rather than military objectives, a pattern Kyiv says will continue for as long as Moscow rejects de-escalation.

Firefighters were pictured working at the site of an apartment building in Ukraine on 26 September 2026, the day before the reported strikes. (Photo: Gleb Garanich, Reuters)

*(FRANCE 24 with AFP)*