Russian drone strike kills woman, child as July turns deadliest for Ukraine

A Russian drone strike on a home in Sumy killed a woman and her young son. The attack came as the UN reported July as Ukraine's deadliest month for civilians since March 2022.Russian jet-powered drones hit a home in northern Ukraine on Friday, killing a 29-year-old woman and her nine-year-old son, officials said, as fresh attacks were reported across the country and beyond its borders. The strike came a day after the United Nations said July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since the weeks following Russia's full-scale invasion.The UN monitoring mission in Kyiv said at least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 wounded in July, as Russia stepped up bombing of Ukrainian towns and cities. Since the invasion began on February 24, 2022, UN human rights monitors say at least 16,874 civilians, including 820 children, have been killed, while 51,273 people, including 3,126 children, have been wounded."Every month this year the number of killed and injured civilians has increased. That trend accelerated sharply in July," Danielle Bell, head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Kyiv, said. "The number of civilian casualties in July was the highest we documented in a single month since March 2022."In the Sumy region, the strike early on Friday also wounded four other people, including the dead boy's father and grandmother, who were taken to hospital with severe burns, regional military administration chief Oleh Hryhorov said. In the eastern Donetsk region, a Russian glide bomb destroyed six floors of a 10-storey apartment block, killing one person and wounding 16 others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy said in a social media post that Russia was launching around 220 glide bombs every day at settlements near the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine. He said Russia attacked 12 Ukrainian regions overnight, wounding dozens of people. Russian forces have been using 3,000-pound glide bombs, along with artillery, missiles and drones, before sending in infantry units, a tactic that has left many towns and villages uninhabitable.Ukraine, meanwhile, expanded its long-range strikes on Russian infrastructure. In Russia's Leningrad region, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said a Ukrainian attack hit the port of Ust-Luga, one of Russia's biggest oil and gas export terminals, and caused a brief fire. The terminal is located more than 800 km from Ukraine and has been repeatedly targeted this summer. In the Tver region, acting governor Vitaly Korolyov said another Ukrainian attack damaged a wall of a Wildberries warehouse. Wildberries, Russia's biggest online retailer, reported "insignificant damage" and said the goods stored there were not damaged. Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted 553 Ukrainian drones overnight over 18 Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the waters of the Azov and Black seas. In Latvia, the army and a NATO official said alliance fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Latvian airspace early on Friday. Latvian authorities did not identify where the drone came from, but said it had entered the country "as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare". Several drones have previously crossed into Latvia, and most are believed to have been Ukrainian drones pushed off course by Russian electronic jamming.NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said two Italian Eurofighter jets were scrambled to tackle the drone, and one of them shot it down. She said two Turkish fighter jets were also deployed. Residents in five municipalities in eastern Latvia were warned about the airspace threat and told to take shelter, as the latest attacks underlined the widening impact of the war and the growing toll on civilians.With PTI Inputs- EndsPublished By: India Today Web Desk Published On: Aug 14, 2026 15:00 IST