Got 5 minutes?We would love to hear from you

Take our survey
War

At least 8 killed, 86 injured in Russian attacks over previous day

2 min read
At least 8 killed, 86 injured in Russian attacks over previous day
Damaged suffered by the town of Merefa after a Russian missile attack on the morning of May 4, 2026. (Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration / Telegram)

Editor's note: This is a developing story, as casualty figures for the attacks on Merefa continue to come in.

Russian attacks against Ukraine killed 8 people and injured at least 86 over the past day, regional authorities said on May 4.

Ukrainian forces downed 135 out of 155 drones, including Shahed-type attack drones, launched by Russia overnight, the Air Force reported. 14 strikes were recorded in ten different locations, according to the statement.

On the morning of May 4, Russian forces struck the town of Merefa in Kharkiv Oblast with missiles, killing at least five people and injuring another 19, regional governoer Oleh Syniehubov reported.

An further five people were injured over the previous day, Syniehubov said.

One person was killed and 12 more injured in Kherson Olast, where Russian forces continue to strike civilians on the Dnipro River bank with drones, artillery, and glide bombs on a daily basis.

Several high-rise apartment buildings were damaged in the attacks, said Kherson Oblast governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

A total of one person was killed and 27 injured in Russian attacks across Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with most of them coming from an attack on the regional capital of Dnipro, said governor Oleksandr Hanzha.

In front-line Donetsk Oblast, one person was killed in the town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, just north of the embattled city of Kostiantynivka, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said. Four more civilians were wounded throughout the oblast.

Eleven people were injured, including two children, in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, as Russian forces attacked the regional capital with drones in the evening, said governor Ivan Fedorov.

At least seven people were injured in Sumy Oblast, all from Russian drones, as the front line and border areas in the region continue to pose serious dangers for civilians, oblast authorities said.

In Chernihiv Oblast, a 30-year-old man was injured by a Russian drone attack on the yard of his home, about ten kilometers from the Russian border, according to oblast governor Viacheslav Chaus.

Avatar
Francis Farrell

Reporter

Francis Farrell is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is the co-author of War Notes, the Kyiv Independent's weekly newsletter about the war. For the second year in a row, the Kyiv Independent received a grant from the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust to support his front-line reporting for the year 2025-2026. Francis won the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandy for war correspondents in the young reporter category in 2023, and was nominated for the European Press Prize in 2024. Francis speaks Ukrainian and Hungarian and is an alumnus of Leiden University in The Hague and University College London. He has previously worked as a managing editor at the online media project Lossi 36, as a freelance journalist and documentary photographer, and at the OSCE and Council of Europe field missions in Albania and Ukraine.

Read more
News Feed
 (Updated:  )

The attack appears to mark one of the deepest strikes into central Moscow's residential core, having occurred approximately seven kilometers west of the city's central Red Square and three kilometers from the Russian Defense Ministry building. The Mosfilm Tower is situated in an elite neighborhood within the city, close to nearby embassies and diplomatic residences.

Show More