Drone terror by numbers: Russia’s 2025 aerial attacks on Ukraine

ACLED [Armed Conflict Location & Event Data - independent global monitor that collects, analyses, and maps data on conflict and protest - ed.] data showed that as of Dec. 12, 2025, Russia carried out:

• 3,010 drone attacks in 2022

• 6,011 in 2023

• 15,955 in 2024

• 26,327 in 2025.

The deadliest attack for civilians in 2025 was a missile strike on a residential high-rise building in Ternopil on Nov. 19, which killed 38 people, including eight children. Another 93 people were injured.

The second-deadliest attack took place in Sumy on April 13, when a ballistic missile strike killed 35 people and wounded 120.

In a mass attack on Kyiv on July 31, 31 people were killed, including three children, and 159 were injured. The highest number of casualties came from a strike on a residential building in the Sviatoshynskyi district.

On June 17, another large-scale missile and drone attack on Kyiv killed 28 people, with 134 injured.

On Sept. 9, Russia struck civilians in the village of Yarova, Donetsk Oblast, with an aerial bomb while residents were standing in line to collect their pensions. The attack killed 25 people and wounded 19.

A missile strike on Dnipro on June 24 killed 20 people and injured 279. Mayor Borys Filatov said it caused the most extensive destruction in the city since the start of the war.

On April 4, Russia fired an Iskander-M missile with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead near residential buildings and a children’s playground in Kryvyi Rih. The attack killed 20 people, including nine children, and injured 61.

On Feb. 1, Russian forces hit a residential apartment building in Poltava with an Kh-22 missile. The strike killed 15 people and wounded 20.

Civilian casualties recorded by the UN monitoring mission

Verified UN data shows:

• 2022: 6,669 civilians killed, 11,996 wounded

• 2023: 2,821 killed, 6,403 wounded

• 2024: 1,964 killed, 8,715 wounded

• First 11 months of 2025: 2,132 killed, 10,552 wounded.

These figures include only casualties that could be officially verified.

In January 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was impossible to determine the real number of civilians killed in Russian-occupied Mariupol, but available information indicates that Russia killed around 20,000 people in the city.