Ukraine has carried out a series of large-scale strikes on Russian military and industrial targets, including an air base and a rocket production facility in the Samara region, as both sides intensify aerial bombardments more than four years into the full-scale war.

In one of the most significant Ukrainian operations in recent weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian forces struck the Progress Center in Samara — a facility linked to Russia's Roscosmos space agency that produces rocket technology and electronics — using domestically produced Flamingo missiles. The target lies approximately 900 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Zelensky also said Russia's Savasleyka air base, some 700 kilometres from the front line, had been hit. "Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia — through concrete damage to specific facilities," he wrote on social media. A Russian regional official acknowledged a "massive" missile attack on Samara's industrial sites, noting localised damage and injuries without specifying further details.

In a separate overnight assault, Ukraine launched around 600 drones targeting the Moscow region, according to the Russian capital's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, who said more than 100 were intercepted and that three people were wounded when debris fell. Meanwhile, Russian forces struck back hard across Ukraine. At least one woman was killed and six others wounded in a missile and drone attack on Kryvyi Rig, the hometown of President Zelensky, in south-central Ukraine. Kyiv also came under ballistic missile attack, sparking fires in at least two city districts and wounding one person. In southeastern Ukraine, a Russian drone strike on an apartment block in the town of Marhanets, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killed a three-month-old baby and wounded eleven people.

The conflict has increasingly spilled into neighbouring Romanian airspace. Romania, which shares a 634-kilometre border with Ukraine, reported on Sunday that a Spanish F-18 fighter jet on a NATO air policing mission had shot down a drone that had illegally entered its airspace — the fourth such incident this year. Romania's Defence Ministry did not identify the drone's origin, though it has previously attributed similar incidents to Russia.

The escalating exchange of long-range strikes reflects a notable shift in the war's character. Ukraine has tripled the number of deep-strike operations since January, according to data from ACLED, an independent conflict monitor, aiming to stretch Russian air defences and damage infrastructure funding Moscow's war effort. Civilian casualties in Ukraine hit their highest level since 2022 this past July, with at least 437 killed and 2,610 injured, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission — underscoring the mounting human cost on both sides of the front.