Russian air strikes using glide bombs killed at least five people and injured more than ten others in the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine on Saturday, with regional governor Ivan Fedorov warning that casualties could rise as people remained trapped under rubble. Fedorov reported at least nine separate missile strikes on the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia, destroying and damaging both residential and non-residential buildings. Emergency teams and utility workers moved to document the destruction and address the consequences of the attacks.
The strikes were part of a broader wave of Russian attacks across Ukraine. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city located in the northeast of the country, guided bombs struck a low-rise apartment block in the Kholodnohirskiy district in the early hours of Saturday, killing at least one person — whose body was pulled from the rubble hours after the attack — and injuring nine others, including a six-year-old child. A separate Russian drone strike in Kharkiv on Friday evening killed a man and injured a woman in a civilian car. Further north, guided bombs struck the outskirts of the city of Sumy, killing one civilian man and damaging at least twenty private homes. A 72-year-old woman was also wounded in a drone strike in the southern city of Kherson.
The attacks came amid a broader escalation on both sides. Ukraine's air force said it shot down 92 of 99 Russian drones launched overnight. In turn, Ukraine struck oil and gas facilities in Russian-occupied Crimea and confirmed a drone attack on an oil refinery in Russia's Tyumen region in western Siberia, though Russian authorities said their air defences prevented any damage there. The strikes follow one of the largest Ukrainian drone attacks since Russia's full-scale invasion began over four years ago, when Ukraine hit a major Moscow oil refinery on Thursday, sending black smoke over the Russian capital and disrupting hundreds of flights.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged citizens to heed air raid warnings, saying Russian forces had prepared for a "massive attack" in the coming hours. Peace talks between the two sides remain at a standstill, and the mutual escalation in strikes — Russia targeting civilian infrastructure across Ukrainian cities, Ukraine hitting energy facilities deep inside Russian territory — underscores the widening geographic and strategic scope of the conflict. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russian oil installations with the stated aim of reducing Moscow's war revenues and bringing the consequences of the invasion home to Russian citizens.