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Strikes across Russia and Ukraine killed 19 people on Sunday, authorities in both countries said, as drones and missiles struck civilian infrastructure on both sides of the front line.
The attacks came as fighting along the front has slowed to a near standstill and peace talks remain stalled, while long-range strikes deep behind each side's lines have escalated sharply, pushing civilian death tolls to their highest levels since the war's early months in 2022.
In Russia, Ukrainian drones killed five people in a residential area of the southern Rostov region, regional governor Yuri Slusar said. Three more people died in the Belgorod, Kursk and Moscow regions, while four others were killed in parts of Ukraine that are occupied by Russian forces.
Moscow regional governor Andrey Vorobyov called the assault "one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory." Russia's defence ministry said it intercepted 822 drones nationwide overnight.
In Ukraine, Russian drones and missiles killed two people and wounded 14 at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The plant, one of the country's largest steel producers, said it had partially suspended operations after the strike damaged core production facilities. A second strike hit Kryvyi Rih later Sunday, killing one more person.
Additional strikes killed two people in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, one in the northern border region of Sumy and one in the eastern Donetsk region.
In Kyiv, a strike destroyed the Pochaina outdoor book market, a longtime destination for rare and antiquarian volumes. Bookseller Dmytro Semenukha, 45, watched all four of his stalls burn down. "There used to be a store. And books, and flags of all the countries, all the countries. Tons of everything. And that's it," he told AFP.
Zelenskyy wrote on social media that Russia strikes civilian infrastructure "wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles." He said that over the past week, Ukrainian cities had been hit by more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs and 62 missiles, and he renewed calls for allies to provide more air defence systems.
Russia has carried out near-daily missile and drone strikes on Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It has recently stepped up the use of ballistic missiles, which are harder to intercept, exploiting gaps in Ukraine's air defences that Kyiv says were worsened after the US-Israeli war against Iran diverted supplies elsewhere.
"When North Korean ballistic missiles destroy infrastructure and claim lives here in Europe, European interceptors cannot simply be allowed to sit in storage," Zelenskyy said. Kyiv has renewed claims that Moscow is receiving additional missiles and troops from North Korea.
Neighbouring countries have reported growing spillover from the drone war. Romania's defence ministry said a Spanish F-18 fighter jet shot down a drone that entered its airspace near the borders with Ukraine and Moldova after the overnight raid.
NATO said Friday its fighter jets downed a drone that entered Latvian airspace, the second such incident in that country within a week, according to Latvia's defence ministry.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has increasingly targeted warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, which Kyiv says supplies components for Russian drones. Another Wildberries warehouse near Moscow was set on fire by Ukrainian drones overnight.
Ukraine has struck roughly 20 warehouses and buildings linked to the company since mid-July. Zelenskyy has said those strikes, along with attacks on oil refineries, are intended to undermine Russia's war economy.
According to a United Nations tally, 437 civilians were killed in Ukraine in July alone, the highest monthly toll since May 2022. Russian authorities reported 79 civilians killed on their side in July, an increase from the previous month.
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