A renewed wave of Russian attacks has struck multiple regions across Ukraine, killing at least 16 people over 24 hours and forcing the country's largest steel plant to suspend operations. ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant, announced it can no longer safely run its facility in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in central Ukraine, marking a significant blow to the country's already strained wartime economy. The strikes come as the conflict enters its fifth year, following Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 — the largest war in Europe since World War II.
Russian forces launched 173 attack drones overnight, of which Ukrainian air defences intercepted or neutralised 134, according to the Ukrainian air force. Strikes hit the northeastern Sumy region, the southeastern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, the Dnipropetrovsk region, and the capital, Kyiv — where several drone attacks have struck residential buildings in recent days. Among the victims was a 17-year-old girl in Dnipropetrovsk and a 69-year-old man in Sumy. Russia, for its part, said Ukrainian retaliatory strikes killed four people in its Krasnodar and Belgorod regions. Ukraine also struck an oil refinery in Krasnodar and a military-supply plant in the neighbouring Rostov region, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Kyiv, residents of a Soviet-era apartment block damaged by a drone described scenes of shock and exhaustion.