Russian drone and aerial attacks on shopping centres and civilian areas across Ukraine have killed at least five people and wounded dozens more, Ukrainian authorities reported, as part of a sustained intensification of Russia's air campaign against civilian infrastructure. The deadliest single incident struck the city of Pavlohrad, a logistics and railway hub in central-eastern Ukraine roughly 75 kilometres from the front line, where a strike on a busy shopping centre during daytime hours killed five people and wounded 67, including eight children. Two emergency responders were also among the injured. Governor Oleksandr Hanzha reported that five districts of the city were struck using a combination of drones, artillery, and aerial bombs, bringing the total number of wounded in Pavlohrad to 76, with some reports citing as many as seven deaths overall.

The Pavlohrad attack was part of a broader pattern of strikes on civilian commercial sites. A shopping centre in Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine, was hit twice in as many days — a drone strike on Wednesday killed two and wounded 20, with further strikes the following day injuring eight more, including three children. In Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital of a territory partially annexed by Russia following its 2022 invasion, a shopping mall was nearly completely destroyed on Monday, though it was closed at the time and no casualties were immediately reported. Last month, Russian drones killed at least 16 people and injured 130 at a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky's home city.

Ukrainian officials framed the targeting of civilian spaces as deliberate.