Russia-Ukraine strikes kill civilians as Kyiv faces missile attacks

Russian and Ukrainian strikes killed civilians on both sides on Saturday. The exchanges highlighted a sharper summer escalation and Kyiv's air-defence strain.

In Short

• Ballistic missiles damaged Kyiv railway infrastructure, killing one person overnight
• A separate strike hit Kyiv region, while Zaporizhzhia village suffered another fatality
• Zelenskyy said a minibus attack in Zaporizhzhia wounded three people

Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least three people in Ukraine on Saturday, officials said, while a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Krasnodar region killed two children and wounded two adults. The attacks came a day after a Russian strike on a shopping centre in Ukraine's Kryvyi Rih killed 16 people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said one person was killed and another was wounded when ballistic missiles hit railway infrastructure in Kyiv overnight. Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had struck a locomotive depot.

In a separate attack, local authorities said one person was killed on Saturday afternoon in a Russian ballistic missile strike on the Kyiv region around the capital. Russian drone strikes also killed one person overnight in a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said. Zelenskyy said three people were wounded in an attack on a minibus in the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.

Moscow's forces have recently stepped up their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, taking advantage of Ukraine's chronic shortage of US-made Patriot air defence interceptors, the only weapon in its arsenal capable of shooting down the missiles.

In Russia's southern Krasnodar region, authorities said a Ukrainian drone strike killed two children and wounded two adults. The Russian online news outlet Astra reported on Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set an oil refinery ablaze in the Samara region. Local officials said damage was recorded at an unidentified "industrial facility" and a logistics centre for Ozon, a competitor to Wildberries.

The latest attacks followed Friday's Russian drone strike on a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine. Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said early on Saturday that the death toll had risen to 16, while nine people were still missing and 130 others were wounded.

Kryvyi Rih is Zelenskyy's hometown. He described the attack as a "double-tap" strike, in which an initial wave of drones hit the area and a second wave followed as rescue workers responded. He said the fire, which spread across 9,000 square metres, had been put out and rescue efforts were under way.

Kryvyi Rih has been hit several times during the 4-year war between Russia and Ukraine. One of the deadliest attacks there was in April 2025, when 20 people, including nine children, were killed.

Large-scale Russian strikes have become frequent this summer. Friday's attacks came just 24 hours after Russia launched scores of missiles and drones at Kyiv in a night assault that killed 16 people. The capital has also been hit repeatedly in recent weeks. More than two weeks ago, 17 people were killed in a strike on Kyiv and the surrounding region, and nine people died in another attack on the city two days earlier. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the hardest-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 wounded.

At the same time, Ukraine has taken the war onto Russian soil with long-range drone strikes on oil facilities that have caused fuel shortages in Russia, and by targeting warehouses of Wildberries, the country's biggest online retailer. The latest exchanges on Saturday added to heavy losses on both sides after Friday's deadly strike on Kryvyi Rih.

With PTI Inputs

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