A burning residential building following a drone strike on Pavlohrad, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, 25 April 2025. Photo: Serhiy Lysak / Telegram
Three people were killed and 14 people were injured in a Russian drone strike on the central Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad on Friday morning, just hours after US President Donald Trump made a rare appeal to Vladimir Putin to stop Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.
Dnipropetrovsk region Governor Serhiy Lysak said that local air defences had downed 11 Russian drones overnight, but that one had struck a residential building in Pavlohrad, killing three people and causing a fire to break out.
Among the dead were a 76-year-old woman and a child, Lysak said, with eight people hospitalised for their injuries, one of whom was in a critical condition.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had launched 103 drones at five regions of the country overnight, adding that it had shot down 41 and that a further 40 decoy drones did not reach their targets.
The attack came a day after a Russian drone and missile strike on Kyiv killed 12 people and injured 87 more in one of the deadliest attacks of the war so far on the Ukrainian capital.
That strike prompted a rare rebuke of Russia from US President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday had accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of prolonging the “killing field” by reiterating that Ukraine would not recognise Russia’s territorial claim to Crimea.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”, Trump wrote on Truth Social, addressing Putin.
During an Oval Office meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on Thursday evening, however, Trump suggested that Russia had signalled its willingness for peace by not seizing all of Ukraine, which he called a “pretty big concession”.
“Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country”, Trump said when asked what concessions Moscow had offered in peace talks, adding that he was putting “a lot of pressure” on Russia.
In an interview with CBS News on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow was “ready to reach a deal” with the US to end the war, but that there were still elements that needed to be “fine-tuned”.
When questioned why Russia continued to attack Ukrainian cities weeks after Kyiv indicated it was ready to accept a US-brokered ceasefire, Lavrov reiterated the Kremlin’s frequent claim that Russian forces “only target military goals or civilian sites used by the military” and said that the situation was “not different” in the Kyiv attack.
