Russian strikes killed five civilians and wounded dozens in Ukraine, local officials said Saturday (September 12, 2026), after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that sending European troops into Ukraine would amount to direct conflict with Russia.

Ukraine is under mounting pressure from Russia’s intensifying air campaign that uses ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones to pierce defences. Moscow’s attacks have targeted Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter in what officials say is meant to demoralise civilians.

Two people were killed and one wounded when Russian drones struck a residential area overnight in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said Saturday (September 12).

One person died and three others were wounded in strikes on Kryvyi Rih, according to local officials.

In the Black Sea port of Odesa and the surrounding area, 35 people were wounded overnight in what regional head Oleh Kiper called a “massive attack.” Among the buildings hit was a residential high-rise, whose upper floors were completely destroyed.

Later on Saturday (September 12), two people were killed in a Russian attack on a grocery store in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region, local officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces struck two chemical industry facilities in Russia, one in Samara and one in Perm. The governors of the regions did not immediately comment, but the Russian independent online news outlet Astra reported drone attacks on chemical plants in both regions.

Putin warns against sending European troops to Ukraine

Mr. Putin, speaking to reporters at a summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies in India on Friday (September 11), said that if European governments send troops into Ukraine, it will mean “a war with Russia.” “Now they’re talking about how they’re considering sending troops into Ukraine. That means a war with Russia,” he said.

Some European leaders have pledged their commitment to a potential peacekeeping force, a prospect that Moscow has repeatedly described as unacceptable.

Mr. Putin also denied that Russia posed any threat to Europe, saying “there is no such threat and never has been.” “We do not threaten, nor do we intend to threaten, European countries,” he said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday (September 10) that two incidents along Ukraine’s borders with Poland and Moldova this week were a preview of potential intensified Russian provocations at Ukraine’s border crossing points with Europe.

Two people died when Russian drones hit the Starokozache border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova on Tuesday (September 8) night, while a “direct threat” to a Polish-Ukrainian crossing point on Wednesday night was only avoided thanks to cooperation between Warsaw and Kyiv, he said.

Zelenskyy offers to meet Putin at G20

Meanwhile, Mr. Zelenskyy told Deutsche Welle, in an interview published Saturday (September 12), that he would meet Mr. Putin if both leaders were invited to the Group of 20 summit of rich and developing nations in December in Miami.

Mr. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Saturday (September 12) that the possibility of Mr. Putin attending the summit had not yet been discussed.

The Kremlin in the past has said that Mr. Zelenskyy can come to Moscow if he wants a meeting with Mr. Putin, a proposal Kyiv has rejected.

“If he really wants to meet with Putin, Putin has already said that he could fly to Moscow,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Saturday (September 12).

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov affirmed Saturday (September 12) that Russia is “ready for negotiations,” but that the so-called “special military operation,” as Moscow refers to its war in Ukraine, “will not be suspended during this period of negotiations.”

India has been in continuous touch with both the Ukrainian and Russian sides and is trying to see if there are ideas and suggestions which can be developed in some way that will contribute to the mitigation or the cessation of the conflict, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Friday (September 4, 2026).

Mr. Jaishankar, who arrived in Warsaw from Kyiv, where he held talks with top Ukrainian leadership on Thursday (September 3), made the remarks after he met Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski.

Addressing a joint press meet alongside Sikorski, Jaishankar said that he discussed the complex global challenges, including supply chain resilience and food, fuel and fertiliser security, with his Polish counterpart.

“The Deputy Prime Minister and I also understandably discussed some major global and regional issues, notable among them is the war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year… I myself have just come here from Kyiv,” he said, referring to his visit to Ukraine a day earlier.

Replying to a question, he said India has been in continuous touch with both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

“What we are trying to do is to see if there are ideas and suggestions which can be developed in some way in which they will contribute to the mitigation, ideally, the cessation of the conflict,” he added.

A day earlier, Mr. Jaishankar had said in Ukraine that India is ready to extend “any help in any manner” to end the Ukraine-Russia war.

He had met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha in Kyiv on Thursday.

After talks with EAM Jaishankar, Mr. Zelenskyy said that he was “grateful to India for its commitment to ending this unjust war.” “This certainly must not be a time of war. Peace is needed. This is India’s clear position,” he said and hoped that other major world powers would also take a clear stance that this war must end and that a reliable peace must be achieved.

On Friday, Mr. Jaishankar reiterated that India believes that endless war must give way to an end to war.

“These are wars without winners. Every additional day means more death, more destruction, more loss to the parties themselves, and more cost to the rest of the world,” he said in Warsaw.

He recalled that this concern was voiced publicly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently.

“Our efforts must therefore focus on promoting dialogue and diplomacy. We must each do what we can in whichever way we believe could be most effective and support the efforts of others to bring this conflict to an end. This is India’s strong conviction, and we are acting on it,” he added. On India’s purchases of Russian oil, the minister said the issue is a conflict, and its solution lies in negotiations, not in trade.

“This war is not going to end… not because somebody chose to buy or not buy oil or alumina or fertilisers or metals and minerals. It will end when there is diplomacy, when there is dialogue and when there is negotiation. So, I think let’s diagnose the problem right,” he said while replying to another question.

Strikes killed 19 people in Russia and Ukraine, authorities said Sunday (August 16, 2026), as waves of drones and missiles pummelled civilian infrastructure on both sides.

With fighting at the front at a near standstill and talks frozen, the warring countries have significantly stepped up long-range attacks deep behind each other’s lines, pushing the civilian death toll to its highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022.

In Russia, swarms of Ukrainian drones killed five people in a residential area of the southern Rostov region, regional governor Yuri Slusar said.

Three more people were killed in the Belgorod, Kursk and Moscow regions, along with four others in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

Firefighters try to put out a fire at a city book market following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 16, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Moscow’s regional governor Andrey Vorobyov described the assault as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory”. Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted 822 drones across the country overnight.

Kyiv market hit

In Ukraine, a barrage of Russian drones and missiles killed two people and wounded 14 at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown.

The plant, one of Ukraine’s biggest steel producers, said it partially halted operations after the strike damaged its core production facilities.

Another strike hit Kryvyi Rih on Sunday evening (August 16, 2026), killing one person.

Strikes also hit other regions, killing two people in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, one in the border region of Sumy and another in Donetsk in the east.

In Kyiv, a popular outdoor book market at Pochaina, long the place to find rare and antiquarian volumes, was struck. Bookseller Dmytro Semenukha saw all four of his stalls burn to the ground.

“There used to be a store. And books, and flags of all the countries, all the countries. Tonnes of everything. And that’s it,” the 45-year-old told AFP.

In a social media post on the overnight raid, Mr. Zelenskyy said that “wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure”.

Over the past week, he said, Ukrainian cities had been pummelled by “more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles”, as he renewed his appeal to allies for more air defence.

Russia has carried out near-daily missile and drone strikes across Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in early 2022.

It has recently intensified attacks using hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, exploiting Ukraine’s air defence shortages after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran diverted supplies.

“When North Korean ballistic missiles destroy infrastructure and claim lives here in Europe, European interceptors cannot simply be allowed to sit in storage,” Mr. Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian attacks on holiday camps in the partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region have killed 11 people, Moscow-installed officials said on Saturday (July 25, 2026), while authorities in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region said a Russian drone strike killed three people.

The strikes followed a major Russian attack on Friday (July 24) near Kyiv that killed at least 10 people and wounded around 100 others, part of a relentless cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that dims the potential of reaching a diplomatic end to Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion of its neighbour.

Four children were among 11 people killed in the attack on the resorts in Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed regional head, said, adding that 16 others were wounded.

Ukraine did not immediately comment.

Sumy regional head Oleh Hryhorov said on Saturday three people were killed when a large fire broke out after a Russian drone struck a “civilian facility,” adding that the victims were drivers for private Ukrainian postal and courier service Nova Poshta.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it attacked a “storage and launch site” for Ukrainian drones in the Sumy region.

In Zaporizhzhia, in southeastern Ukraine, a Russian drone attack late Friday hit a shopping centre, causing a fire that spread over a 500-square-metre area and injuring several people, regional head Ivan Fedorov said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his evening address on Friday that intelligence assessments indicated that Russia was preparing missiles for a large attack, saying there were indications that this could happen in the next 48 hours.

Ukraine keeps targeting oil facilities

A Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire in the grounds of the Tyumen Oil Refinery, in western Siberia, Tyumen regional Gov. Aleksandr Moor said on Saturday (July 25, 2026).

Writing on X Saturday, Mr. Zelenskyy confirmed the hit on the Tyumen plant, along with a logistics facility in Yekaterinburg and a fuel and lubricants warehouse in Rostov-on-Don.

Ukraine’s long-range drone technology has evolved during the war, posing a problem for Russia, whose huge land mass is hard to protect fully.

Kyiv’s forces have targeted Russian oil facilities, causing fuel shortages and embarrassing President Vladimir Putin.

Russian air defences shot down 660 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Defence Ministry said Friday (June 26, 2026), one of the highest figures since the start of the conflict.

Drones were destroyed over more than a dozen regions, including the Russian capital and the annexed Crimean Peninsula, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov, the Ministry said on Russia’s state-run Max platform.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, said at least 47 drones heading toward the capital were intercepted.

“Emergency services specialists are working where the debris fell,” Mr. Sobyanin said on Telegram, without reporting any casualties or damage.

A “massive” drone attack also struck the Tula region, about 180 km (112 miles) south of Moscow, Dmitry Milyaev, the region’s governor said.

“A private residential house was damaged in a settlement in Shchekino district, as a result of which a woman was wounded,” Milyaev said on Telegram.

Ukraine has stepped up its long-range drone strike campaign against Russia in recent months, particularly targeting energy infrastructure, with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of a vital source of revenue to fund its war effort, now in its fifth year.

A Ukrainian attack caused a fire last week at a refinery in the southeast of Moscow.

Russian shelling killed ​three civilians in ‌Ukraine’s frontline city ​of Kramatorsk ⁠in the eastern Donetsk region, a ‌local official said on ‌Friday (June 19, 2026).

Vadym Filashkin, ‌Governor ⁠of Donetsk ⁠region, said on the Telegram app that ​six others ‌had been injured in two attacks on the ‌city, with ​strikes occurring near a high-rise ⁠apartment building and a car ‌park.

Kramatorsk is in the so-called “fortress belt” of cities in eastern Ukraine seen ‌by Russia as ​a key target in ⁠its slow advance to ⁠capture the entire Donetsk ‌region.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned on Wednesday (June 3, 2026) of a “real” risk of the Ukraine war escalating, as Kyiv showcases its ability to strike deep inside Russian territory.

The remarks came after Ukrainian drones struck energy infrastructure in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, an attack Kyiv called retaliation for a mass wave of Russian strikes on Tuesday (June 3) that killed at least 23 people.

“Ukraine has become increasingly effective at conducting long-range strikes deep into Russia,” Mr. Rubio told a Senate appropriations panel.

It’s “one of the things that reminds us of why it’s important to try to bring this war to an end, if we can, because the risk of escalation is real, more real than it was two years ago,” he added.

Speaking earlier to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rubio lamented the lack of progress on ending the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“To this point, neither side has been willing to make concessions, particularly on the Russian side, necessary in order to bring peace about,” he said.

“But we stand ready, and we’ve engaged and invested a tremendous amount of high-level time on that conflict over the last year,” he added.

Peace talks ​between the United ‌States, Russia and ​Ukraine ⁠are on pause amid the Iran war, ‌Izvestia reported on Thursday (March 19, 2026), ‌citing Russian ‌officials.

Izvestia ⁠said the ⁠Kremlin had confirmed the pause and ​that the ‌Iran war could push Kyiv towards compromise.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev would continue working on investment and economic cooperation, but the trilateral talks were on pause.

“Kirill ‌Dmitriev continues work. ​The trilateral group is ⁠on pause,” Peskov was ⁠quoted as saying by ‌Izvestia.

Russian drone attacks killed one person in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Monday (November 10, 2025) and wounded three in the Kharkiv region, officials said.

Kramatorsk, which had a pre-war population of around 150,000 people, is one of the few remaining civilian hubs in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control.

The city council posted on Telegram that seven drones hit the city within 30 minutes on Monday evening. A man in his 60s was killed in the shelling, according to preliminary information, it said.

“Civilian infrastructure and the residential quarters were under fire, there was damage to an educational institution and residential buildings,” it added.

Last month, a Russian drone killed two Ukrainian journalists and wounded a colleague in Kramatorsk, their news outlet and regional officials said.

A drone also hit a car in a village in northeastern Kharkiv region on Monday, wounding two men aged 24 and 42, as well as a 16-year-old boy, the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office wrote on Telegram.

Almost four years after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, both sides are heavily entrenched. Moscow’s army said on Monday it had captured three more villages on the sprawling front line.