Russian drones struck a shopping mall in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine on Friday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 130, including 23 children, according to cbsnews.com. Oleksandr Hanzha, who heads the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, announced the casualty figures on Friday evening. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for whom Kryvyi Rih is a hometown, described the incident as a double-tap strike, explaining that an initial wave of drones hit the area before a second wave struck as rescue workers responded.
Shopping Mall Strike in Kryvyi Rih Leaves 15 Dead
Describing the assault on social media, Zelenskyy wrote that it was an absolute Russian atrocity and that they were simply monsters, and later added that attacks like those were nothing less than terrorist acts, as reported by the bostonglobe.com. Zelenskyy stated in a video address that Ukraine would respond to the shopping mall attack. Kryvyi Rih has faced multiple strikes during the more than 4-year-old war, with a previous attack in April 2025 killing 20 people, including nine children.
Widespread Casualties Across Multiple Ukrainian Regions
The shopping mall strike occurred alongside separate Russian attacks in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, bringing Friday’s total death toll across Ukraine to 21 people, according to authorities cited by AOL. In the Kharkiv region, a Russian drone strike killed two women aged 73 and 66 and wounded two others, according to regional head Oleh Syniehubov. In the southern Mykolaiv region, a separate Friday evening attack killed four people, including three children, according to emergency services.
These strikes followed a heavy aerial assault a day earlier in which Russia pounded the capital of Kyiv with scores of missiles and drones, killing 16 people. Large-scale strikes have persisted through the summer. According to United Nations figures released in August, Kyiv was among the hardest hit cities in July, sustaining at least 54 civilian deaths and 202 injuries. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force stated on Telegram that its forces shot down or suppressed 107 out of 135 drones launched by Russia overnight.
Escalating Long-Range Strikes and Air Defense Pressures
Analysts note that long-range strikes between Russia and Ukraine have escalated as ground troops face restricted movement along the roughly 780-mile front line due to heavy deployments of drones and ground robots. Moscow’s forces have intensified ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting a chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors in Ukraine’s arsenal. Ukrainian officials state that Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no intention of stopping the invasion.
Concurrently, Ukraine has carried out retaliatory long-range drone operations inside Russia. Local officials reported that a Ukrainian drone strike hit a car in Russia’s Belgorod region near Razumnoye, killing one person and wounding four others, two seriously. Zelenskyy also reported that separate Ukrainian drone attacks struck an oil refinery in Perm—located more than 995 miles from the border—and the Marinovka military airfield in Russia’s Volgograd region. Russian online media outlet Astra reported that the Perm refinery, operated by Lukoil, was set ablaze, while local officials acknowledged damage at an industrial facility.
