Russian drone strike kills 15 miners in Ukraine

Published February 2, 2026
This handout photograph released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine on February 1, 2026. —AFP
This handout photograph released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine on February 1, 2026. —AFP

KYIV: Fifteen people were killed and seven wounded after a Russian drone struck a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, energy firm DTEK and government officials said on Sunday.

The attack came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that a second round of US-brokered trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia would take place next week.

DTEK said in a statement that Russian forces had carried out a “massive terrorist attack” on a company mine in the region, and that all the dead and wounded were its employees returning from a shift.

“Today, the enemy carried out a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” energy minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on the Telegram app.

Strike on maternity hospital

Police said the attack took place in the city of Terenivka. Footage posted by the State Emergencies Service showed a charred bus with shattered windows that had veered off the road.

Earlier on Sunday, regional officials said at least nine had been wounded in Russian strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Sunday’s strikes also follow remarks by Zelenskiy earlier in the day that Russia — which said it had agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure until Feb 1 — was still targeting logistics in Ukraine.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2026

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