Russia and Ukraine this Saturday extended the war of in-depth attacks with new waves against railways, ports, refineries and logistics centers located far from the front. Russian attacks left people dead in kyiv and Zaporizhzhia. The Ukrainian drones caused civilian casualties in Yeysk, Belgorod and the occupied Luhansk region, in addition to fires for the first time in a warehouse of Ozon, the other company that, together with the repeatedly attacked Wildberries, leads online purchases by Russians. A refinery in Samara also burned. Meanwhile, in Kryvyi Rih, the Ukrainian president's hometown, the rescue of the victims of the shopping center attacked by Russia on Friday continues. In its fourth year of invasion, Moscow is terrorizing the Ukrainian population while kyiv tries to damage the enemy's economy by causing more and more civilian deaths.
The toll of that double attack against the largest shopping center in Kryvyi Rih amounted to 16 dead and more than 130 injured, including more than 20 minors. Nine people remain missing, including two children. Sixty-one remain hospitalized and 23 are in serious or critical condition. The first wave reached the Soniachna Galereya during opening hours. The second, more treacherous, arrived about 30 minutes later, when firefighters, paramedics and police were already working on the premises. Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of deliberately directing that second attack against emergency teams.
This Saturday the attacks continued. Russia launched missiles and drones against several Ukrainian regions. A missile hit a railway facility in kyiv's Darnitsia district, killing an employee. A drone caused another death and four injuries in Kushugum, Zaporizhzhia. The Rozdilna station in Odessa was damaged and a border crossing with Moldova was temporarily closed. Regional reports added another five deaths and 26 injuries in Kherson, Donetsk and Sumy. Ukraine claimed to have neutralized three surface-to-air missiles, six small cruise missiles and 182 drones.
The Ukrainian wave left at least six civilians dead in Russia and occupied areas, according to Russian authorities. In Yeysk, in the southern Krasnodar region, two children from the same family died and their parents were hospitalized. The target of the attack was a company located within the port, although the remains of the downed drones caused a fire there. The city has, in addition to the Azov Sea cargo port, an important military air base. In Belgorod, also located on the Russian side but next to the border with Ukraine, two people died and 13 were injured. In Luhansk, occupied by Russia since 2014, two other people died, including a 16-year-old teenager, and nine were injured.
In Samara, drones reached for the first time a logistics center of Ozon, Russia's second largest e-commerce giant, after weeks of attacks on Wildberries warehouses. The Chapaevsk warehouse has been set on fire and has suspended its activity. Ozon has evacuated more than 500 workers and reported several injuries: now all Russian online purchases are in the Ukrainian crosshairs. The Ukrainian General Staff claimed responsibility for the attack on the Novokuibyshevsk refinery, located about 900 kilometers from the front and capable of processing 8.8 million tons of crude oil per year. kyiv says it produces fuel and lubricants for Russian forces. Moscow claimed to have intercepted 457 drones overnight.
From the beginning of the invasion, Russia incorporated the bombing of cities, electrical networks, ports and railways. This summer, Ukraine has taken its drones further and further afield to set fire to refineries, attack bases and disrupt the Russian economic rear with losses, shortages and smoke. kyiv presents this offensive as an attempt to reduce Moscow's war capacity. In reality, it is a way to anticipate attacks that you will not be able to stop due to your lack of interceptors.
The land front advances slowly and consumes too many men. This Saturday, the Ukrainian General Staff raised its estimate of Russian casualties to 1,475,270, including 1,240 during the last day. The nominal count by Mediazona and the BBC Russian service has identified 239,354 Russian military dead as of August 13. Another calculation by Mediazona and Meduza, based on Russian inheritance records, placed the number of deaths that occurred until the end of 2025 at 352,000.
Ukraine faces its own personnel crisis. A brief report from Carnegie in March described severely lacking frontline units, declining voluntary recruitment, fatigue among veterans and record numbers of absences. Recruitment centers sent more than 1.5 million requests to the police to locate evaders so far in 2026. The National Police has investigated more than 20,000 criminal cases since 2022, has annulled 6,500 irregular opinions from medical commissions and has charged 76 heads of recruitment centers in corruption investigations. In this climate, tensions lead in some cases to violence. Ukrainian media report today that a 55-year-old military recruiter was stabbed to death on Friday in Lviv during a document check. A police officer shot the 25-year-old suspect in the leg and officers detained him. Currently all males between the ages of 25 and 60 are subject to mobilization under martial law, even some rejected by the army.
