A Russian drone strike on a passenger bus near the front line in southeastern Ukraine has killed at least five people and injured seven others, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.

The attack struck an area around the city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha, who announced the toll on Telegram.

Nikopol sits on the opposite bank of the Dnipro river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war.

Photos posted by Ukrainian officials showed windows blown out of a white minibus, with a trail of blood streaming down the side of the vehicle.

"Russians cynically struck a passenger bus. They targeted a minibus which carried people going about their daily business," said Mykola Lukashuk, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council.

There was no immediate comment from Russia on the attack.

Separately, an explosion was heard in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday morning, while a Russian strike caused a fire at a warehouse in the city, according to local authorities.

Russia also attacked energy infrastructure in Ukraine's central Poltava region overnight into Wednesday, regional governor Vitalii Diakivnych said, without providing further details. A Russian drone additionally struck an unnamed industrial facility in the region, Diakivnych said on Telegram.

Russia's Defence Ministry announced it had hit a cargo vessel in Ukraine's Black Sea port of Chornomorsk, in the Odesa region.

The number of civilians killed in Ukraine has increased sharply this year, according to the United Nations. At least 1,396 civilians were killed and 7,978 others wounded in Ukraine during the first six months of 2026, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, representing a 37 percent increase compared with the same period the previous year.

During the same period, at least 250 civilians were killed and 1,596 others injured in Ukrainian attacks inside Russia, according to the UN mission, citing credible Russian open-source reporting. That figure represents a 121 percent increase in civilian casualties inside Russia compared with the previous year.

Both Ukraine and Russia deny deliberately targeting civilians in the conflict, which began with Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022.