Russian strikes kill eight across Ukraine as Zelensky counts 3,900 projectiles

Russian strikes killed eight people across Ukraine on 27 September 2026, authorities said, a day after Moscow's foreign minister told the United Nations General Assembly that Russia intended to continue its military campaign. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched about 3,900 drones, aerial bombs and missiles at Ukraine over the past week. Ukraine accused Moscow of deliberately targeting civilians as winter approaches.france24.com+1

The toll matters because it lands as Ukraine braces for a second hard winter and as US-led talks to end the war have failed to produce a breakthrough. The United Nations has highlighted a growing civilian toll as both sides become more entrenched. What is new is the scale of the weekly barrage Zelensky described, combined with strikes on children's facilities, schools and communications infrastructure that Ukraine says have no military purpose.independent.co.uk

What the strikes hit

Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi announced that Russian strikes hit a children's centre in the northern city of Sumy, killing three people including a 16-year-old girl. Zelensky said three people had been killed in night-time strikes on the southern Zaporizhzhia region, and that a Russian drone strike had killed one man in Kyiv. Authorities in the Odesa region said a strike on the south of the region had killed one more person.

Local officials said drones set ablaze a market outside the Ukrainian capital, killing two people. Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitchko said a woman and two 16-year-olds had been wounded and hospitalised in the capital. The city's administration said 16 sites had been damaged, including 12 houses, a warehouse and a production facility. Russian strikes in the Odesa region damaged housing, a shop, a hotel, a medical building and a grain warehouse, regional head Oleg Kiper said.

Zelensky said Russia had fired about 3,900 drones, aerial bombs and other missiles at Ukraine over the past week. He broke the figure down as more than 2,200 attack drones, around 1,650 aerial bombs and 38 missiles of various types, a significant number of them ballistic. The latest strikes had targeted two kindergartens, two schools, housing and other civilian infrastructure in various parts of the country, he added.

Where the numbers came from

Zelensky wrote on the social platform X that anywhere in the world this choice of targets would be called by one word, terrorism, and that Russia had no military objective in doing it. He said the strikes were purely an attempt to break people and inflict as much harm as possible on society, and that dozens of people were injured. He said two kindergartens and two schools had been hit on 27 September 2026.

Russia's defence ministry said it had bombed a Kyivstar data centre in Kyiv and another belonging to the Omega Telecom company, claiming the firms were providing services to the Ukrainian army. The ministry released an image of a drone bearing the message Digital Detox, confirming the strikes were aimed at disrupting internet access in Ukraine. Russia denies that it aims at civilian targets. The defence ministry also said Russian forces had seized the border village of Khrypuny in the eastern Kharkiv region.

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the UN General Assembly his country intended to continue its military campaign to the end. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said his decision to meet Lavrov in New York on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Saturday was driven by security concerns and a growing food-export crisis, the first such talks since before Russia's 2022 invasion. Wadephul said Russia's alleged deployment of armed drones at Leipzig airport had crossed a line.

What happens next

In Russian-occupied Ukraine, a strike by Kyiv's forces on 27 September 2026 killed a civilian woman in Enerhodar, the town housing Europe's largest nuclear plant, according to its Kremlin-installed mayor Maxim Pukhov. US-led talks to end 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. The Kremlin has repeatedly said it intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine.

Canada, Norway and Ukraine will convene foreign ministers and international partners in Toronto on 28 and 29 September for Pathways to Peace: Second International Conference on Returning Ukrainian Children, Detained Civilians and Prisoners of War, according to an opinion piece by the Canadian, Norwegian and Ukrainian ambassadors in South Africa. The conference builds on a ministerial conference hosted by the same three countries in Canada in 2024.