A Russian military officer has been killed in a bomb attack in Sevastopol — the largest city in Russian-annexed Crimea — and a woman arrested on suspicion of assassinating him on behalf of Ukrainian special services, the regional governor says.
Several unofficial Russian Telegram channels on Thursday named the victim as Robert Shageyev, a former Ukrainian naval officer who switched allegiance to Russia during Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. But Myrotvorets, an unofficial Ukrainian website that provides a database of people described as war criminals or traitors, said Shageyev had been "liquidated".
Separately, regional governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said five people were killed in Sevastopol overnight during an operation to dispose of an explosive device.
He said four emergency service bomb disposal specialists and a security guard were carrying out clearance work following a Ukrainian drone attack on the city when the explosion occurred.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defence units shot down or intercepted 362 Ukrainian drones overnight across a number of Russian and Russian-controlled regions, including Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Both sides have scaled up their attacks in the fourth year of the war which has raged since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Ukraine increasingly targeting oil refineries and retailer warehouses in an effort to raise the cost to Moscow of continuing the war.
An oil refinery in the Russian city of Orsk that was hit by a Ukrainian drone strike two days ago has been forced to shut down completely, and repairs could take up to six months, the regional governor said on Thursday.
"Shrapnel damaged key infrastructure that cannot currently be repaired. The equipment is imported, and due to sanctions, repairs could take up to six months. The plant has completely shut down," Yevgeny Solntsev, governor of the surrounding Orenburg region, posted on social media.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it had attacked the Orsk refinery, located near the border with Kazakhstan about 1,470 km south-east of Moscow, and set it on fire.
A Russian drone attack on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in southern Ukraine killed two people on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said.
"Today in the Odesa region, the Russians once again destroyed an ordinary passenger train locomotive with a jet-powered drone. There were 340 people on the train," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
"Whoever was operating that drone certainly could not have been unaware that the target was entirely civilian," he added.
None of the passengers were harmed, the chief executive of the state railway operator said.
A video published by the Ukrainian emergency services showed a bright fire raging in the train cab, the front of which was blown out and mangled.
Moscow's forces have repeatedly targeted trains throughout the war, in what Kyiv calls a campaign to cut off logistics and hit civilians.
The United Nations also said on Thursday that the number of civilians killed in Ukraine in July jumped to its highest level since the first months of the Russian invasion.
"At least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured in Ukraine in July, a 30 per cent increase compared with the previous month and a 70 per cent increase compared with July 2025," the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission said in a statement.
Following the attack, Mr Zelenskyy repeated his call for "more air defence support and more pressure on Russia" as concerns mount that Ukraine is running out of interceptor missiles.
He previously told CNN that Ukraine needed five per cent of the United States' Patriot interceptor missiles to get through the winter.
"If they can sell us 10 per cent, we will destroy all the Russians' ballistic missiles," he said.
Russia and Ukraine swapped bodies of killed soldiers on Thursday.
"The bodies of 261 deceased persons have been returned to Ukraine, which, according to the Russian side, belong to Ukrainian servicemen," Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement.
Kyiv has previously accused Russia of including the remains of civilians and Russian soldiers in the exchanges.
Citing a Russian lawmaker, the RBC media outlet also said Moscow had handed over 261 bodies, while Ukraine had transferred 24.
The exchange of bodies and captured prisoners of war are some of the only areas where the two sides conduct diplomacy and reach agreements, more than four years since Russia invaded.
