Massive Russian Strike on Ukraine: Casualties and Damage

A massive Russian missile and drone attack on various regions of Ukraine left at least six civilians dead, including two children, and caused extensive damage to residential areas in another incursion that once again directly hit the population. Emergency services reported evacuated families, burning homes and destroyed businesses in different neighborhoods, with rescue teams working among the rubble searching for possible trapped people. "State Emergency Services teams worked for hours to put out fires and assist the injured, while damage continued to be assessed in residential areas. The military report indicated that drones—including about 50 Shahed kamikaze and Gerbera-type unmanned aircraft—took off from Kursk, Millerovo, Oryol, and Primorsko-Akhtarsk, in Russian territory, and were intercepted in northern, southern, and eastern corridors of Ukraine. In total, at least 37 damage episodes to homes, infrastructure, and civilian vehicles were documented, in a day marked by sirens and intermittent power outages. Russia, for its part, denounced a Ukrainian drone counterattack against the port of Tuapse, in the Krasnodar region, which caused fires and affected oil facilities and a tanker. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the offensive included the launch of two Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 79 attack drones; defenses managed to neutralize 67 devices, but multiple impacts and the fall of fragments in urban areas caused casualties and destruction. Authorities specified that the deaths were concentrated mainly in Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa. According to a regional administration statement, one of the devices impacted port infrastructure directly, which led to the evacuation of the crew hit by shrapnel and broken glass in nearby buildings, including the train station. On the strategic plane, Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) claimed a special operation that would have taken out of service the circular pipeline that surrounds the Moscow region and supplies gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel to Russian forces. Regional authorities reported 753 Russian attacks on 18 localities in the Zaporizhzhia region, with 496 drone strikes of various types—mainly FPV—seven multiple rocket launcher (MLRS) bombings, and 242 artillery attacks. The repetition of nighttime attacks with combined vectors—ballistic missiles and drone swarms—kept much of Ukrainian territory on alert throughout the night. Even so, the impact of a ballistic missile and 12 drones on six installations was recorded, in addition to the fall of debris from downed projectiles in two other points, which contributed to expanding the radius of destruction in populated areas. In parallel, the southern front was again under strong pressure. According to the GUR, the action disabled 'three lines' of a 'military facility important' in the Ramenskoye district, despite the anti-drone network and the presence of private guards, in a blow aimed at degrading the logistics of the Russian campaign. The human toll of the latest offensive once again put the direct impact of the war on the civilian population at the forefront. In the locality of Pishchansky, in Dnipropetrovsk, a missile and a drone hit civilian infrastructure during the early hours of Saturday: seven residential buildings were damaged and one business was destroyed.