Russian drones hit a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 121, local authorities said. Twenty-two of the wounded were children.
The city is the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he was quick to describe what happened. A second wave of drones, he said, arrived while emergency workers were responding to the first, an apparent “double-tap” attack. “Attacks like these are nothing less than terrorist acts,” he wrote on social media while rescue teams searched the damaged site.
Kryvyi Rih has been hit repeatedly since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. One of its deadliest strikes came in April 2025, when 20 people, nine of them children, were killed.
A second night of heavy fire
Friday’s attack followed a major overnight barrage on Kyiv and surrounding areas a day earlier that killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens. It went on for hours, with ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones. Ukrainian officials said 38,000 people, more than 2,000 of them children, sheltered in Kyiv’s underground stations. Residential buildings, a school, a children’s hospital and a kindergarten were among the sites damaged. Zelenskyy said Russia had been preparing the strike for some time and mixed different missiles and drones to hit civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down or suppressed 107 of 135 Russian drones launched overnight. In the Kharkiv region, a separate drone strike killed two women, aged 73 and 66, and injured two others, regional authorities said.
The strikes have revived worries about Ukraine’s thin air defences. Kyiv has asked Western allies again for more US-made Patriot interceptors, one of the few systems able to stop Russian ballistic missiles.
Ukraine hits back at Russian oil
Kyiv kept up its own long-range drone campaign. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in Perm, more than 1,600km from the border, and the Marinovka military airfield in the Volgograd region. Russian officials confirmed damage at an unspecified industrial facility in Perm, while the Russian outlet Astra reported a fire at a Lukoil-operated refinery. Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted 325 Ukrainian drones over 15 Russian regions and Crimea.
Poland, Romania and Moldova reported more airspace activity tied to the fighting and deployed aircraft and air-defence systems in response to possible threats near their borders.
