A Russian attack on a village in the Kharkiv region of northeast Ukraine killed at least 10 people, the local governor said on Tuesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The strike comes amid a surge in civilian deaths in the four-and-a-half-year war.
Russian forces “carried out a rocket strike on Pechenigy,” a village around 40 kilometres from the Russian border, Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on social media.
“According to preliminary information, 10 people were killed,” he added, with eight people wounded.
The strike damaged private houses and shops, he added.
The Kharkiv region, parts of which are occupied by Russian forces, has been hit heavily since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Meanwhile, a total of 620 drones flew towards the Moscow region overnight, Russian officials said on Tuesday, reporting that several people were wounded and buildings were hit.
“Tonight and in the morning, air defence and electronic warfare forces were repelling a large-scale drone attack on Moscow region,” Moscow region Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram.
The “most serious consequences” were reported in the Pavlovsky Posad district, where a house burned down, Vorobyov said.
With frontline fighting at a near standstill and talks frozen, Ukraine and Russia have significantly stepped up long-distance attacks, pushing the civilian death toll to its highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022.
Targeting Ukraine’s energy sector
The strike on Kharkiv comes a day after Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz Group said its facilities had been targeted 13 times over the past week, bringing the total number of attacks to almost 300 since the start of the year.
Russian drones and missiles struck facilities in several regions of the country, with one asset hit multiple times during the week, Naftogaz said, reporting serious damage to equipment and production capacity. No employees were hurt in the attacks, the company said.
DTEK Group, a coal mining and power production company which says it is the largest private investor in Ukraine’s energy sector, also said a Russian attack started a fire at one of its mines, killing a 52-year-old man.
Russia has repeatedly battered the Ukrainian power grid with Moscow hoping to sap Ukraine’s will to fight by denying civilians light, heating and running water during the bitter winter months.
Ukrainian officials, who say Russia is “weaponising winter,” fear Moscow will pursue its campaign through the coming winter, too.
With troops largely bogged down by drones and robots along the roughly 1,250-kilometre front line, both Russia and Ukraine are expanding their aerial campaigns and devising new long-range weapons.
Ukraine has been targeting energy sites with drones and missiles deep inside Russia for months, hoping to hit a vital source of revenue for the Russian army.
With Moscow now within range of Ukrainian drones that regularly attack the region, organisers cancelled a large military music festival due to be held on central Moscow’s Red Square from Friday.
The organisers of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival said on social media Monday that the event was postponed until next year due to reasons beyond their control.
In May, authorities significantly scaled back Russia’s annual Victory Day celebrations on Red Square for the first time in nearly two decades.
Russia’s defence ministry said that there would be no military hardware at the annual parade because of fears of long-range attacks by Ukrainian drones.
Innovative solutions
Ukraine depended heavily on foreign military aid after Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022 but has gradually increased its domestically produced firepower, firing a salvo of more than 800 long-range drones at Russia on Sunday.
Ukraine also has successfully targeted depots owned by Wildberries, Russia’s main online retailer, as far as 2,000 kilometres from Ukraine’s border.
Russian forces have increasingly hit apartment blocks, ports, schools and hospitals, among other urban targets, killing close to 17,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.
The death toll of 437 Ukrainian civilians in July was 70% higher than the same month in 2025, it said last week, as Russia’s barrages intensified.
Russia has exploited Ukraine’s severe shortage of US-made Patriot air defence interceptors, which are the only way of countering ballistic missiles.
But Kyiv is swiftly innovating, with Ukraine now developing its own ballistic missile to hit back at Russia and working with European countries on developing more anti-ballistic air defences.
