Russia-Ukraine War

Ukraine is pushing for concrete results by year-end on a European anti-ballistic missile system, joining the Freyja programme as an alternative to Patriot batteries amid deepening supply shortfalls. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said allied deliveries of interceptor missiles have fallen to one-third of last year's level, with partners citing Middle East conflicts while he suggested political motives may also play a role. U.S. President Donald Trump expressed uncertainty about granting Kyiv a production licence, saying the missiles are needed domestically.

The push comes as Ukraine observes a day of mourning after 17 people were killed in a Russian strike on the Kyiv region on Thursday. Civilian casualties are mounting: the United Nations recorded 1,396 deaths in the first half of 2026, a 37% increase over the same period last year.

On the battlefield, Ukraine struck oil facilities deep inside Russia and hit two Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea, while Sweden prepares to hand over the seized shadow-fleet cargo ship Caffa. Zelenskyy will visit Serbia on Sunday.

Ukrainian drones struck two additional Russian oil refineries early Saturday, igniting fires at the Rosneft-owned Syzran plant in Samara and the Ilsk facility in Krasnodar, wounding five people, after this week's record barrages on deeper energy targets.

The assault involved roughly 400 drones aimed at southern and southwestern Russia. The Russian Defence Ministry said it destroyed up to 480 Ukrainian drones across several regions, Crimea and the Sea of Azov.

Russia retaliated with strikes on Kyiv and its outskirts that killed at least four people, including a child, while a drone hit a weapons-carrying vessel east of Odesa and a passenger train was attacked in Sumy. President Volodymyr Zelensky said at least one other person died in strikes on civilian infrastructure.

Russian ballistic missiles killed three people, including a child, and wounded three others in the Brovary district east of Kyiv early Saturday, regional administration head Tymur Tkachenko said. In the capital, four people were injured and fires broke out in two districts after the overnight bombardment, which also involved drones and glide bombs.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who arrived in Belgrade for his first visit to Serbia since the 2022 invasion, has warned that delays in receiving anti-ballistic systems from partners are causing severe casualties. He said Ukraine received only a third as many air-defence missiles in the first half of 2026 as during the same period last year.

Meanwhile, Ukraine struck two Russian oil refineries and launched drones at a Wildberries warehouse in Ekaterinburg. The US Senate passed a sanctions bill imposing tariffs of up to 100 percent on countries still buying Russian energy.

Russian attacks killed at least two people and wounded six in the Dnipropetrovsk region on Friday, part of a barrage that struck the area at least 50 times with drones, artillery and aerial bombs. A strike on a market in Bilopillja wounded ten people, while cluster munitions killed two in Kharkiv and a drone struck a car in Kherson, killing a 77-year-old woman. Near Kyiv, three people including a child were killed in the Brovary district, with residential buildings and cars damaged in an eastern suburb of the capital.

Ukraine launched retaliatory strikes, with a drone hitting an apartment building in Kerch, Crimea, killing two. Multiple drones were also seen over a Wildberries logistics facility in Yekaterinburg before large fires broke out. Kyiv says its 40-day campaign has hit 14 refineries, oil depots, aircraft and airfields.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's president arrived in Serbia for his first official visit to the Balkan country.

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone barrages of the war, striking the Slavneft-YANOS and Bashneft-Novoil oil refineries more than 700 and 1,300 kilometres from the front line, after weeks of targeting logistics routes and energy nodes supplying Crimea. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes aimed to curb Russia's oil revenues and confirmed hits on two military patrol boats and shadow-fleet vessels in the Black Sea.

Yaroslavl's governor said falling drone debris ignited fires at storage tanks at Slavneft-YANOS, one of Russia's five largest refineries, injuring four people. Russia's defence ministry said it downed 605 drones across 18 regions, marking the second-largest barrage since late June. Ukrainian drones also targeted a Wildberries logistics warehouse in Tver, adding to more than 20 distribution centres destroyed in recent weeks.

At least 11 people were killed in Russian attacks across Ukraine, including strikes on a civilian bus and a wheat-carrying cargo ship. Ukraine's foreign minister said US-mediated peace efforts appear to be on hold, while Putin ordered the creation of a rear-guard defence service following dozens of civilian deaths on Russian soil.

Russian drones struck a German-owned cargo ship in the Black Sea off the coast of Odesa on Wednesday, sparking a fire and forcing the evacuation of its 11-person crew, while a separate attack on a grain carrier killed one crew member. The Liberia-flagged Emil, owned by Hamburg-based Johann M. K. Blumenthal GmbH & Co. KG, was approximately 21 nautical miles from Odesa when it was hit. All crew were safely evacuated, though the vessel lost maneuverability after sustaining multiple strikes.

The Russian defense ministry said it targeted two vessels carrying military matériel. The second ship, the Guinea-Bissau-flagged Mera Queen, was transporting Ukrainian wheat, according to Ukraine's port authority.

Separate Russian missile strikes also destroyed a Kyiv warehouse belonging to German lubricant manufacturer Liqui Moly, along with facilities linked to Puma and Bosch. The attacks came a day after a drone bomb was discovered at Leipzig airport.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin appointed Valery Solodzhuk as chief of rear services for the Russian armed forces and raised the military's authorized strength by 25,000 to 2.426 million.

Houthi rebels launched a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones against Yemeni government military camps on Thursday, killing at least 30 soldiers and wounding more than a dozen in some of the deadliest strikes in years of the country's civil war.

The assaults hit installations in Marib and Hadramout provinces, including bases of the Emergency Forces and Homeland Shield units. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the operation destroyed a large number of buildings, weapons and military vehicles and caused hundreds of casualties among what he called Saudi-backed mercenaries. A Yemeni military source said at least 58 troops had been killed, while other accounts put the toll lower. The Houthis said the attacks responded to a Saudi military build-up along the border.

The US embassy condemned the strikes as cowardly, and the Saudi-led coalition said a separate Houthi strike injured 11 civilians in the Saudi border city of Najran. Deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq called on all parties to exercise restraint. The violence follows the Houthis' July announcement of a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia and attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Belgrade on Saturday for his first visit to Serbia since taking office in 2019, a trip a senior Ukrainian official described as a deliberate move to pull Serbia away from Russia's sphere of influence.

The visit carries pointed symbolism. Serbia has not imposed sanctions on Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and remains heavily reliant on Moscow for gas supplies. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2025, and the Ukrainian official called the upcoming trip a slap in the face for the Russians.

Vucic travelled to Ukraine in July 2026 for a regional summit — his first visit since the war began — but refused to sign a joint declaration condemning Russia's aggression.

Ukraine failed to intercept a single Russian ballistic missile during an overnight attack on Kyiv that killed at least 17 people and wounded 44, marking a sharp deterioration in air-defence capability after earlier strikes killed six in the Kryvyi Rih area.

Russian forces fired 24 ballistic missiles and 115 drones at the capital, targeting civilian infrastructure including a brewery and logistics centre. While Ukrainian forces shot down 98 drones, none of the ballistic missiles were intercepted. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attributed the interceptor shortage primarily to demand from the war in the Middle East, where Gulf states expended more than 1,100 interceptors in the first three months of the Iran conflict.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who coordinated with Zelenskyy on rallying allied support, stressed the urgent need to reinforce Ukrainian defences. The United States is pressing ahead with talks to allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot interceptor components for assembly elsewhere in Europe, while allied missile supplies have fallen to a third of their 2025 level.

North Korea has begun deploying a missile unit to western Russia equipped with up to 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers for potential strikes against Ukraine, according to Andrii Cherniak of Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence.

The unit, comprising roughly 90 North Korean personnel, will be based in the Voronezh region within Russia's 112th Missile Brigade. Pyongyang has also dispatched a new batch of 40 KN-23 and KN-24 missiles, with further configuration to be finalized at top-level talks next month. The KN-23 and KN-24 systems carry a larger payload and greater range than Russia's Iskander equivalent but are considered less accurate, Ukrainian military assessments indicate.

The deployment follows Russia's first use of North Korean missiles against Ukraine since last August, including a strike that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said killed at least five members of a single family in the village of Radushne. Approximately 9,500 North Korean troops remain stationed in Russia's Kursk region, though they are not currently engaged in direct combat operations.