At least 13 people were killed and approximately 90 injured in Ukraine after Russia launched large-scale missile and drone attacks on several Ukrainian cities overnight, while Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia's border region of Belgorod left five dead and two dozen more wounded, including a four-year-old boy.
In Ukraine, a single strike on the Kyiv capital region killed three members of one family — a three-year-old boy and his grandparents — with a separate strike in the same area claiming a fourth life. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city located in the northeast of the country, Russian missiles struck a high-rise apartment block in the Saltivskyi district, killing three people and injuring 37 others. At least six further deaths were reported across the frontline cities of Sumy, Kherson and Donetsk, in the eastern industrial Donbas region. In Odesa, Ukraine's main Black Sea port, local authorities reported that "dozens of missiles and drones" struck the city and surrounding area, injuring eight more people. Russia's defence ministry said its strikes had targeted drone warehouses in the Kharkiv region, as well as fuel depots and military stores at the port of Odesa, and claimed its forces had intercepted 153 Ukrainian drones overnight.
On the Russian side, Ukrainian drone strikes on Belgorod — a region that borders northeastern Ukraine and has frequently been hit by Ukrainian attacks since the full-scale invasion began — damaged 29 apartment blocks, five private houses, administrative buildings and commercial facilities, regional authorities said. Debris from Ukrainian drones also fell on two industrial sites and a private home in Novorossiysk, a Black Sea port city that hosts a major fuel terminal linking Kazakhstan's oil fields to international markets and that has previously been targeted by Kyiv as part of a broader campaign against Russian energy infrastructure.
These exchanges come against a backdrop of what Ukrainian and Western officials describe as a critical shortage of interceptor missiles for US-made Patriot air defence systems — currently the only weapon in Ukraine's arsenal capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed for stronger international support, calling for new sanctions to prevent Russia from producing ballistic missiles and urging allies to supply additional anti-ballistic systems, interceptor missiles and other air defence equipment. Zelenskyy has also sought permission from tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to use his Starlink satellite communications network to guide Ukrainian strikes against missile launchers inside Russia.
The scale and frequency of Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities has intensified in recent weeks, while Kyiv has sustained long-range drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and other targets deep inside Russia, contributing to what reports describe as a fuel crisis there. The cycle of strikes underscores the grinding attritional character of the conflict and the mounting civilian toll on both sides.