In April, the Russian Federation significantly intensified missile strikes on densely populated cities of Ukraine, which led to an increase in the number of civilian casualties. This was reported by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, UNN writes.
For the period from April 1 to 24, 2025, the UNHCHR confirmed at least 848 civilian casualties – 151 dead and 697 wounded. This is 46 percent more compared to the same period last year. The verification process is ongoing, so the number of victims is likely to increase
It is noted that a massive strike by the Russian Federation on the night of April 24, which affected several regions of Ukraine, and in Kyiv, according to the latest data, 12 people died, 90 were injured.
"The scenes of destruction and human suffering that we witnessed this morning in Kyiv demonstrate a worrying trend: it is the civilian population that bears the brunt of increasingly intense and frequent attacks," said Danielle Bell, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
The mission also mentioned Russian strikes on Sumy (where 35 people died on April 13, Palm Sunday, more than 100 were injured) and Kryvyi Rih (where 20 people died in a missile strike on April 4, including nine children, and another person died in a drone strike on the same day).
Other large cities, including Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, have also been repeatedly subjected to intense shelling in recent weeks. In each case, the use of explosive weapons with a wide area of effect: missiles, barrage ammunition and air bombs almost daily caused the death and injury of civilians, as well as significant destruction of infrastructure
The UN added that in the frontline areas, the civilian population is under constant threat of strikes by short-range drones and mentioned the strike in Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk region, on a civilian bus carrying workers to a mining and processing plant, which killed nine people and injured more than fifty.
"These nine people died while simply going to work in the morning. The drone, which was operated in real time, allowed the operator to see that the target was a regular bus. And despite this, it became a target," said Danielle Bell.
The UNHCHR notes that such cases are not isolated, and observers have recorded an increase in the number of deaths and injuries among civilians in the frontline areas of Kherson, Donetsk, Sumy and Kharkiv regions as a result of short-range drone strikes.