Zelenskyy urges partners to "unblock" Patriot interceptors after Russian strikes kill four in Dnipropetrovsk region

Russian strikes killed at least four people and injured 22 in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Saturday evening, 24 October, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. Regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said a drone hit a high-rise building in the town of Synelnykove, setting its fourth floor on fire, the Guardian reported.

Scale of the attacks

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 153 drones and an unspecified number of cruise missiles overnight; 119 drones were shot down or suppressed, with impacts in 15 locations, ABC News reported. Ukraine’s emergency service said six people were injured when a Russian drone hit a five-storey residential building in Vinnytsia, and that rescuers came under repeated strikes; a fire tanker was destroyed. Over the past week, Zelenskyy said, Russia fired about 1,600 guided aerial bombs, 48 missiles and nearly 2,300 attack drones at Ukraine.

Call for air defence

“We need to unblock the already agreed-upon deliveries of interceptors for Patriot systems,” Zelenskyy wrote, adding that support for Ukraine’s defenders must not decline alongside US-led negotiations. “This is how Russia responds to diplomacy and de-isolation,” he said, according to Anadolu. He also asked for continued support for Ukrainian combat aviation against jet-powered Shahed drones.

Russian side

Russian officials said Ukrainian drones killed two people in a minibus in the Bryansk region and one person in Belgorod. Russia’s defence ministry claimed it struck logistics sites in Kharkiv. Claims from both sides could not be independently verified.