The Pryluky drone strike on warehouses in Chernihiv Oblast has left three people dead and 13 injured, marking one of the latest escalations in Russia’s ongoing aerial campaign. Among the victims was a war-crimes prosecutor, raising fresh concerns about the scope and targets of these attacks.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the strike hit the warehouse complex and sparked a fire that crews worked through the day to bring under control. “Russian forces struck the city of Pryluky with drones this afternoon,” the agency said in a statement, adding that the fire had fully broken out at the warehouse building before it was extinguished. Chernihiv Regional Police, in an earlier statement carried by Ukrinform, said: “Russian forces attacked the warehouses of an agricultural company in the town of Pryluky.”
How the toll changed through the day
The casualty count shifted several times as emergency crews worked the scene. Initial reports Monday morning put the toll at two dead; police then revised that to three killed and seven injured as more details came in. By the afternoon, the State Emergency Service reported the number of injured had climbed further, to 13, while the death toll held at three. Investigative and forensic police teams, along with explosives specialists, remained at the site collecting evidence, and authorities warned residents to stay away from the area given the risk of a follow-up strike – a standard precaution after Russian attacks in Ukraine, which have at times targeted the same location twice within hours.
Among the dead: a prosecutor who worked war crimes cases
One of the three people killed was identified as Oleksandr Shket, a prosecutor with the Pryluky District Prosecutor’s Office, according to the Chernihiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office. Shket had worked in the region’s prosecution service for more than 15 years. His death adds a particular weight to the strike: Ukrainian prosecutors are among the officials responsible for documenting and building legal cases around Russian attacks on civilians, and his office has now opened its own investigation – this time into his death.
Ukrainian authorities have classified the strike as a suspected war crime under Article 438 of the country’s criminal code, which covers attacks that violate the laws of war; that classification reflects the position of Ukrainian investigators and has not been assessed by an independent international body.
Not the first strike on Pryluky this month
Monday’s attack was the second time in a week that Pryluky, a city of roughly 50,000 people about 120 kilometers east of Kyiv, was hit by Russian forces. On Sept. 7, a Russian strike sparked a fire at a British American Tobacco cigarette factory in the city, a facility that employs around 500 people producing several cigarette and heated-tobacco brands. Neither the tobacco factory nor Monday’s warehouse complex has an obvious direct military function, and the repeated targeting of the same city within a week has drawn attention from Ukrainian outlets tracking the pattern of Russian strikes on economic and logistical sites away from the front line.
Part of a wider campaign against Ukraine’s supply chains
Monday’s strike fits a broader pattern that has developed since June, when Russian forces began stepping up attacks on warehouses and distribution centers across Ukraine. Dozens of such facilities – many of them supplying Ukraine’s largest supermarket chains and retailers – have been damaged or destroyed in the months since, contributing to localized shortages in some stores and raising concerns about future price increases for ordinary Ukrainian shoppers. The Pryluky warehouse hit Monday belonged to an agricultural enterprise, placing it squarely within that pattern of strikes on civilian logistics infrastructure rather than military targets.
The scale of Monday’s wider Russian attack
Pryluky was not the only place hit overnight into Monday. Russian forces launched 108 attack drones across Ukraine as part of the broader assault, and Ukrainian air defenses said they destroyed or intercepted 85 of them. In the southern Kherson region, separate Russian attacks over the same 24-hour period killed two people and wounded 14 more. The strikes came as the war between Russia and Ukraine, now well into its fifth year, continues with no active ceasefire in place and diplomatic efforts to end the fighting largely stalled.
What comes next
Ukrainian police and prosecutors are continuing to investigate the Pryluky strike, including the death of their own colleague, and officials have not said whether the death toll could rise further as cleanup continues. For residents of Pryluky, the immediate concern is whether the city – twice hit in a week – will be targeted again; for the wider country, Monday’s strike adds to a growing count of warehouses and supply routes damaged since June, a trend Ukrainian officials say is beginning to show up in what’s available on store shelves.
Related: HumanCrisisNews war coverage – the Pavlohrad shopping center strike
For continuing coverage of the Pryluky attack and the broader war, see: Kyiv Post – Russia Targets Central Pryluky, Kills 3, Wounds 7.
