Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least three people in Ukraine, officials said Saturday (August 22, 2026), while a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Krasnodar region killed two others, a day after a strike on a Ukrainian shopping centre killed 16 people.

In the latest attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that one person was killed and another wounded when ballistic missiles hit railway infrastructure in the capital, Kyiv, overnight.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that its forces had hit a locomotive depot.

In a separate attack, local authorities said one person was killed Saturday (August 22, 2026) afternoon in a Russian ballistic missile strike on the Kyiv region, which surrounds the capital.

Moscow’s forces have recently intensified their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting Ukraine’s chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defence interceptors, the sole weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down the missiles.

Russian drone strikes also killed one person overnight in a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said Saturday (August 22, 2026). Mr. Zelenskyy said that three people were wounded in an attack on a minibus in the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.

In Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, authorities said that two children were killed and two adults were wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike.

The latest attacks came a day after Russian drones struck a shopping center in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine on Friday (August 21, 2026).

Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said in the early hours of Saturday (August 22, 2026) that the death toll had risen to 16 and nine people remain missing after the attack, which wounded another 130.

Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Mr. Zelenskyy, who described the attack as a double-tap strike, in which an initial wave of drones hit the area, followed by a second wave as rescue workers responded. The Ukrainian leader said the fire, which spread across 9,000 square metres (around 97,000 square feet), had been extinguished and rescue efforts were underway.

Kryvyi Rih has been hit multiple times during the 4½-year all-out war between Russia and Ukraine, with one of the deadliest occurring in April 2025, when 20 people were killed, including nine children.

Large-scale Russian strikes have become a regular occurrence this summer, with Friday’s (August 21, 2026) attacks landing just 24 hours after Russia pounded Kyiv with scores of missiles and drones in a nighttime assault that killed 16 people.

The capital has been hit hard repeatedly in recent weeks: 17 people were killed in a strike on Kyiv and its surrounding region just over two weeks ago, and nine died in another attack on the city two days before that. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the hardest-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 wounded.

At the same time, Ukraine has shifted the war onto Russian soil through long-range drone strikes on oil facilities that have caused fuel shortages across Russia. It has also unsettled the Russian public by striking warehouses of Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer.

The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday (August 22, 2026) that a Ukrainian drone set ablaze an oil refinery in the Samara region. Local officials said that damage was recorded at an unidentified “industrial facility” and a logistics center for Ozon, a competitor to Wildberries.

Authorities in Russia’s second city of St ​Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad ‌region said on Saturday (July 4, 2026) the area ​suffered a major ⁠Ukrainian drone attack overnight, with a Baltic Sea port that handles oil ‌exports reported hit.

St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said the ‌city of 6 million had ‌come ⁠under a “large-scale” drone attack. ⁠He gave no details of specific targets, but local media outlet Bumaga reported ​a fire ‌at the city’s oil terminal.

Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko said drones had struck the port ‌of Vysotsk, about 170 km (105 ​miles) northwest of St Petersburg on the Gulf ⁠of Finland. The port handles oil, grain, coal and liquefied natural ‌gas.

Drozdenko said 72 drones were shot down over the Leningrad region.

Ukraine has intensified strikes on Russian energy infrastructure this year, causing fuel shortages in ‌parts of Russia.

St Petersburg, about 900 km (560 ​miles) from Ukrainian-held territory, has occasionally come under attack ⁠from Kyiv’s drones. Targets have included ⁠the city’s oil terminal and a moored warship during ‌the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.

A fire broke out at an oil depot in the southern Russian port of Novorossiysk following a Ukrainian drone attack, the city’s mayor said on Saturday (May 23, 2026).

“As a result of falling UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) debris, a fire broke out at the oil depot. Several technical and administrative buildings caught fire. Fragments of the drones also fell onto the fuel terminal site,” Mayor Andrey Kravchenko wrote on Telegram.

Two people were wounded, he added.

Novorossiysk handles around a fifth of Russia’s crude oil shipments and is the country’s largest export hub on the Black Sea.

Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences had intercepted 348 drones in total from Ukraine overnight.

In response to daily bombardments since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine has regularly struck within Russian territory.

Kyiv frequently carries out long-range strikes that it says target energy facilities in a bid to dent Russia’s oil revenues.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday (December 30, 2025) that a Ukrainian ‍drone attack on a presidential residence ​in the Novgorod region would toughen Russia’s ‌position on a possible peace ​deal to end the fighting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed the Russian accusations as “another round of lies” aimed to justify additional attacks against Ukraine and to prolong the war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry ​Peskov noted Ukraine’s denial of the ⁠drone attack — and said that many Western media were playing along with Kyiv’s denial.

“This terrorist ​action is aimed ⁠at collapsing the negotiation process,” Mr. Peskov told reporters. “The diplomatic consequence will be to toughen the negotiating position of the Russian ‌Federation.”

The Russian military, he said, ‌knew how and when to respond.

“We see that Zelenskyy himself is ‍trying to deny this, and many Western media outlets, playing along with the ‍Kyiv regime, are starting to spread the theme that this did not happen,” Mr. Peskov said. “This is a completely insane assertion.”

Mr. Peskov declined to say where Mr. Putin was at the time of the attack, saying that in light of recent ⁠events, such details should not be in the public domain.

When asked ​if Russia had physical evidence of ⁠the drone attack, he said air defences shot the drones down, but that the question of wreckage was for the Defence Ministry.