KYIV: Ukrainian attacks on Russia killed at least nine people on Sunday, while Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five, according to officials in both countries. The exchange comes amid signs both Moscow and Kyiv are escalating the scale and intensity of their strikes, nearly four-and-a-half years into the war.
Civilian casualties in Ukraine have risen sharply this year as Russia has increasingly relied on long-range missiles that are difficult to intercept, according to UN data. Kyiv, meanwhile, has stepped up retaliatory strikes on Russian energy facilities and retail warehouses, seeking to pressure Moscow toward negotiations.
In Russia’s Belgorod region, a strike near a playground killed a 13-year-old girl along with three others, according to acting governor Alexander Shuvayev, who said medics could not save her given the severity of her injuries. Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, described the strike as a deliberate act of terror by Ukraine.
Elsewhere in Russia, a drone attack on the Saratov region killed two people, with a residential building struck in the city of Engels — home to a military airbase. Ukraine’s military said it had targeted both the Engels airbase and an oil refinery in Saratov, along with an oil depot in the Kaluga region, sparking fires. A Ukrainian drone strike on a car in Russia’s Udmurtia region, more than 1,000 km from the front line, killed three people; regional governor Olga Abramova called the strike senseless and said the victims were clearly not a military target.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 635 Ukrainian drones overnight. Among the targets hit was a warehouse belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, in the Samara region roughly 800 km from Ukraine’s front lines; Samara’s governor said there were no casualties and a resulting fire was extinguished.
Ukrainian forces have struck around a dozen Wildberries facilities since July 18 as part of an effort to disrupt the company, often likened to Russia’s version of Amazon.
In Bashkortostan, regional governor Radiy Khabirov said air defenses repelled a large-scale drone attack on industrial sites, though one drone struck an industrial area near the regional capital, Ufa.
On the Ukrainian side, Russian strikes killed two people in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and at least one person each in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. In Zaporizhzhia city, glide bombs killed one person and injured 21, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. A separate strike destroyed a postal terminal in the northern Kharkiv region, killing a postal worker, mail operator Nova Poshta said. Russia’s Defence Ministry also said its forces struck infrastructure and two vessels carrying military cargo in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, as well as a vessel in the Black Sea.
US-led talks aimed at ending the conflict — Europe’s deadliest since World War II — have been effectively stalled since February, when the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran. Both Moscow and Kyiv continue to deny targeting civilians.
