Kryvyi Rih mall strike kills 14 as Russian drone attacks kill 20

Russian drones struck a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih and other Ukrainian regions, killing 20 people. The double-tap strike on rescuers underscored the mounting civilian toll and widening drone war.

In Short

• Zelenskyy called the Kryvyi Rih strike a double-tap attack targeting rescuers
• Kharkiv and Mykolaiv attacks killed six more people, including three children
• Ukraine said it neutralised 107 of 135 Russian drones overnight

Russian drone strikes on Ukraine killed 20 people on Friday, including 14 in an attack on a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih, authorities said. The attacks also hit the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, while Ukraine said it had brought down or suppressed 107 of the 135 drones launched by Russia overnight.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strike on Kryvyi Rih, his hometown, was a 'double-tap' attack, with a second wave of drones hitting as rescue workers responded to the first. In a social media post, he said, 'Attacks like these are nothing less than terrorist acts.' In a video address later, he said Ukraine would respond to the shopping centre attack.

Local administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said 14 people were killed in Kryvyi Rih and 121 were injured, including 22 children. He said rescue work was continuing as 'the rubble is being cleared'. The city has been hit several times during the more than four-year war. One of the deadliest attacks there was in April 2025, when 20 people, including nine children, were killed.

Earlier on Friday, a Russian drone strike in the Kharkiv region killed two women aged 73 and 66 and injured two others, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said. Later in the evening, another Russian attack in the southern Mykolaiv region killed four people, including three children, according to emergency services.

The attacks came a day after Russia launched a large overnight missile and drone assault on Kyiv that killed 16 people. Large-scale Russian strikes have become frequent this summer. Just over two weeks ago, an attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region killed 17 people, and nine were killed in the city two days before that. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the worst-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 injured. Moscow has recently stepped up ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, taking advantage of Ukraine's shortage of US-made Patriot air defence interceptors, the only weapon in its arsenal capable of bringing down those missiles.

There were also fresh Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. In the Belgorod region, near the village of Razumnoye, a Ukrainian drone attack hit a car, killing one person and injuring four others, local officials said. Two of the injured were in serious condition. Zelenskyy said a separate Ukrainian drone strike hit an oil refinery in Perm, more than 1,600 kilometres from Ukraine's border, and also struck the Marinovka military airfield in Russia's Volgograd region.

Russian online outlet Astra reported that the drone strike set fire to a Lukoil-operated oil refinery in Perm, though local officials only said damage was recorded at an unidentified industrial facility. Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted 325 Ukrainian drones overnight over 15 Russian regions and Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. Later on Friday, it said another 211 drones had been shot down.

Long-range strikes by both sides have increased as troops have failed to make major gains on the battlefield, analysts say. Movement along the roughly 1,250-kilometre front line in eastern and southern Ukraine has been severely limited by large numbers of drones and ground robots threatening infantry and vehicles. Over the past year, Ukraine has developed and used home-produced long-range drones to strike deep inside Russia. Officials in Kyiv want ordinary Russians to feel the effects of the war and to pressure President Vladimir Putin into peace talks, but Putin has shown no sign of intending to stop the invasion. Friday's fighting underlined both the heavy civilian toll inside Ukraine and the widening reach of cross-border drone attacks.

With PTI Inputs

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