Fire and smoke billow from a residential structure hit in a Russian air raid in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Sunday, October 5, 2025.
AP/Ukrainian Emergency Service
In a significant overnight offensive, Russian forces launched a barrage of drones, missiles, and precision-guided bombs targeting civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, resulting in at least five civilian fatalities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that Moscow deployed more than 50 ballistic missiles alongside approximately 500 drones striking nine different regions.
Among the hardest hit was Lviv, a historic city in western Ukraine often regarded as a refuge from the conflict. Regional authorities and emergency responders confirmed that a combined missile and drone attack claimed the lives of four individuals, including a 15-year-old teenager. Additionally, six others were injured, according to police reports.
Mayor Andriy Sadovyi detailed the aftermath, noting that two districts experienced power outages and public transportation was temporarily halted early Sunday. He also mentioned a fire at a business center on Lviv’s outskirts, emphasizing that the facility was civilian in nature and unrelated to military operations.
Further south, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, one person sustained injuries during the attacks, as reported by Governor Svitlana Onyshchuk.
In Zaporizhzhia, located in southern Ukraine, a nighttime aerial assault resulted in the death of a civilian woman and injuries to nine others, including a 16-year-old girl, according to regional Governor Ivan Fedorov. The attack involved drones and guided bombs, damaging residential buildings and cutting power to roughly 73,000 homes in the city and nearby areas.
An elderly woman reacts next to a house demolished by a Russian airstrike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on October 5, 2025.
Kateryna Klochko/AP
In the eastern Donetsk region, the city of Sloviansk-still under Ukrainian control-suffered a guided bomb strike on an apartment building, injuring six people, including a child, according to regional prosecutors. The assault on Saturday evening also damaged over twenty residential buildings, vehicles, shops, and a café.
President Zelenskyy renewed his appeal to Western allies for enhanced air defense systems to counteract Russia’s ongoing aerial assaults. In a Telegram message, he emphasized the urgent need for swift implementation of defense agreements to protect civilian life and infrastructure from these attacks.
Ukraine has also intensified its own long-range operations against Russian targets, focusing on critical oil facilities around Moscow, which has contributed to persistent fuel shortages in Russia.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has escalated its campaign against Ukraine’s electrical grid ahead of the winter season, a tactic seen in previous years since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Kyiv condemns these strikes as attempts to weaponize the cold by depriving civilians of essential services such as heating, electricity, and water.
Additionally, Russian forces have intensified air raids on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure, vital for military logistics, with near-daily attacks over the past two months. A recent drone strike on a railway station in Shostka, northern Ukraine, resulted in one death and numerous injuries.
