Ukraine's military said it shot down seven ballistic missiles and 258 drones as Russia carried out a lengthy attack that extended over Wednesday night and well into Thursday. The strikes targeted civilian infrastructure across the country, including ports, grain storage, energy facilities and industrial sites.
Massive overnight strike hits infrastructure
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia carried out a massive strike against Ukraine, targeting ports, grain storage, energy, industry and other infrastructure with ballistic and hypersonic missiles and combat drones. Commuters went to work in Kyiv to the boom of air defences firing at waves of drones, Reuters reported.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that Kyiv had received a small batch of US-made Patriot interceptors that can shoot down ballistic missiles.
Civilian casualties and damage reported
In Kharkiv, one person was killed and two were injured in a lunchtime attack on a shopping centre, said the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov. The strikes also targeted a Kyiv-area retail distribution centre and a shipment hub for a toy company, their chief executives said. Chocolate firm Roshen, founded by former president Petro Poroshenko, said one of its warehouses outside Kyiv was destroyed.
Russian strikes also hit industrial sites, energy facilities and other infrastructure in the central Poltava and southern Odesa regions, as well as the south-eastern city of Kryvyi Rih, officials said.
Kherson power plant loses all generating capacity
A Russian attack on a thermal power plant in Ukraine's southern city of Kherson resulted in the loss of all of its generating capacity, state oil and gas company Naftogaz said. The company's CEO, Sergiy Fedorenko, said the Russians struck a purely civilian facility that provides heat to a significant portion of Kherson's residential buildings.
Kherson regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin called for people to leave the city if they could, especially families with children and elderly people. He said Russian forces again attacked Kherson's district heating plant with glide bombs, causing very serious damage, and that the city may find itself without electricity or heating for a long period.
Drones enter Moldova; car bomb kills Russian serviceman
Six Russian drones crossed into the airspace of Ukraine's neighbour Moldova, local authorities said, prompting President Maia Sandu to strongly condemn this intimidation. One of them was found on Moldovan territory.
A Russian serviceman was killed by a car bomb in St Petersburg on Thursday, officials said. His wife was injured. Throughout the war, assassinations have targeted key Russian military personnel, military-industrial figures and prominent supporters of the war effort, both within Russia and in occupied Ukraine. Kyiv's security services including the SBU have claimed responsibility for some of the killings.
Russia scrambles for fuel imports
The Guardian's Peter Beaumont has written about how far Russia is having to go to import diesel and gasoline because of the damage Ukrainian strikes have done to its petroleum industry. So many refineries are damaged that Russian oil is being sent to Kazakhstan for processing into fuels that are shipped back.
For the first time, Russia this week bought 200,000 barrels of gasoline from Turkey, the fifth confirmed seaborne delivery of vehicle fuel this summer, after previous shipments from India amounting to 1m barrels in total. Russia has signed a deal with the Kondensat oil refinery in western Kazakhstan this week to process Russian crude, with 70% of the refined fuel shipped back to Russia by rail according to reports, because there is no pipeline. Fuel imports from war ally Belarus this June increased by a factor of 141 compared with June 2025.
EU urged to revisit frozen Russian assets
The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden called on Thursday for the EU to look again at using frozen Russian central bank assets to finance Ukraine. The four countries told the EU executive in a letter: “We believe now is the time to revert to the issue of how we can make further use of Russia’s immobilised assets for the benefit of Ukraine.”
The EU has failed to strike a deal on tapping the roughly €200bn (£170bn/US$230bn) after objections from Belgium, where the vast bulk of the financial assets are held, that it could be deemed legally liable. EU countries instead loaned Ukraine €90bn.
Arson plot against drone maker foiled
An arson attack planned by three suspects in eastern Slovakia targeted drone maker Skyeton, prosecutors said on Thursday. Skyeton, founded in Ukraine, says it produces drones for civilian and military use in Ukraine and other countries. A spokesperson for the regional prosecutor's office in the eastern city of Presov said the attack was supposed to aim at the Skyeton company's factory.
A German prosecutor told Reuters that a 26-year-old Latvian had been detained in Hamburg and extradition proceedings were under way. Slovak prosecutors said a Latvian and a Ukrainian had been detained in Slovakia.
