Russian drones kill 15 at shopping mall in Zelenskyy's hometown in double-tap strike

On Friday, Russian drones descended on a shopping mall in Kryvyi Rih, the central Ukrainian city where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born, killing at least 15 people and wounding 130 others, including 23 children. The attack followed a pattern Zelenskyy himself identified as a double-tap strike—an initial wave of drones hit the area, then a second wave came as rescue workers rushed to help the wounded. It is a tactic designed to maximize casualties among those trying to save lives.

Zelenskyy's response was immediate and raw. "An absolute Russian atrocity. They're just monsters," he wrote on social media, pledging that Ukraine would respond. Oleksandr Hanzha, who leads the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, confirmed the toll: at least 15 dead and 130 injured from the mall strike alone. Kryvyi Rih has endured repeated bombardment throughout the war. In April 2025, a single attack killed 20 people, nine of them children. Friday's strike was the latest in a pattern of escalating violence against the city.

But the shopping mall was only part of Friday's assault. Russian drones and missiles struck across Ukraine, leaving 21 people dead by day's end. In the Kharkiv region, two women—aged 73 and 66—were killed and two others wounded. In the southern Mykolaiv region, four more died, including three children. Ukraine's air force reported that it shot down or suppressed 107 of the 135 drones Russia launched overnight, a significant interception rate that nonetheless allowed dozens to reach their targets. The attacks came just 24 hours after Russia had pounded Kyiv with scores of missiles and drones, killing 16 people in that single nighttime assault.

This tempo of strikes has become routine. Two weeks earlier, a Russian attack on Kyiv and its surrounding region killed 17 people. Two days before that, nine more died in the city itself. The United Nations reported last week that Kyiv was among the hardest-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 injured. Analysts attribute the escalation to a stalled ground war. Along the roughly 780-mile front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, troops have made little significant progress, constrained by the proliferation of drones and ground robots that make conventional infantry movement nearly suicidal. Unable to break through on the battlefield, both sides have turned to long-range strikes against infrastructure and civilian targets.

Moscow's intensified use of ballistic missiles exploits a critical Ukrainian vulnerability: a chronic shortage of the U.S.-made air defense systems that remain the only weapons capable of reliably intercepting them. This imbalance has made Ukrainian cities increasingly exposed to sustained aerial bombardment.

Ukraine has not remained passive. On Friday, Zelenskyy announced that Ukrainian drones had struck an oil refinery in Perm, roughly 995 miles from Ukraine's border, as well as the Marinovka military airfield in Russia's Volgograd region. The Perm refinery, operated by Lukoil, caught fire in the attack, according to the Russian news outlet Astra, though local officials were more cautious, confirming damage only to an unidentified industrial facility. A separate Ukrainian drone attack in Russia's Belgorod region killed one person and wounded four others when a car was struck near the village of Razumnoye.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses intercepted 325 Ukrainian drones overnight across 15 Russian regions and Crimea, then reported shooting down another 211 drones later Friday. Over the past year, Ukraine has developed and deployed domestically produced long-range drones, a capability that has drawn the attention of governments and defense manufacturers worldwide. Kyiv's strategy appears designed to make the Russian public feel the war's consequences and to pressure President Vladimir Putin toward negotiating a settlement. So far, Putin has shown no indication he intends to halt the invasion.