About one hundred Russian servicemen were killed or wounded in a single operation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on May 21, 2026. The target was an FSB headquarters in the village of Henicheska Hirka, in occupied Kherson Oblast.
“A Russian FSB headquarters has been struck, and a Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile system has been destroyed in our temporarily occupied territory,” Zelenskyy said, according to Ukrainska Pravda. He called the casualty toll the result of “just this one operation.”
Who carried it out
The strike was credited to Special Operations Center “A” of the Security Service of Ukraine, known as Alpha. Ukrainska Pravda reported that the unit used drones and hit several buildings at once, as shown in video the president released. Babel placed the site on the Arabatska Spit, close to the administrative border with Crimea, and described it as a command center for FSB special forces. Babel’s report put Russian losses in the hundreds, a higher figure than Zelenskyy gave.
Euromaidan Press noted that the casualty numbers are Ukrainian claims and have not been independently verified. Zelenskyy’s statement itself gave no location; Hromadske and other outlets filled in the village.
The air defense angle
The Pantsir-S1 is not a side detail. Gwara Media described it as a system aimed at drones, missiles, aircraft and precision weapons, which is the kind of defense that makes deep strikes harder. Euromaidan Press reported that Alpha operations had destroyed roughly half of Russia’s Pantsir-S1M and S2 systems through 2025, which it said opened gaps for Ukrainian long-range attacks.
Zelenskyy has a name for those attacks. He calls them “long-range sanctions,” and he presents them as pressure on Moscow when Western sanctions fall short.
Four days earlier, on May 17, the SBU and Ukraine’s Defense Forces had raided the Belbek air base in Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing SBU sources. That attack damaged military infrastructure and air defense equipment on the base.
The timing drew notice abroad. Euromaidan Press pointed out that on the same day, Russia and Belarus were running joint nuclear exercises while Vladimir Putin met Xi Jinping in Beijing to talk about Ukraine.
Sources
- Ukrainian strike on Russian FSB and Pantsir-S1 kills or injures around 100 Russian troops, Zelenskyy says
- Over 100 Russian servicemen killed or injured in Ukrainian attack on FSB headquarters, Zelenskyy says
- SBU strikes FSB special forces headquarters, losses reach hundreds
- Ukrainska Pravda English
