RUSSIA AND UKRAINE STRIKES KILL AT LEAST 16 IN 24 HOURS

At least 16 people were killed as Russia and Ukraine exchanged drone and missile strikes over a 24-hour period, according to authorities on both sides. Ukrainian officials said Russian strikes killed at least six people in areas including Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, where a 17-year-old girl was among the dead, while a separate Russian attack a day earlier had killed seven people in Kyiv. Russia said Ukrainian strikes killed four people in its Krasnodar and Belgorod regions. Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-appointed official leading occupied Kherson, said a Ukrainian drone hit a cafe in Askaniya-Nova, killing two young girls and a man, according to his account on Telegram. Moscow-appointed official Yevgeny Balitsky said Ukrainian strikes killed three more people overnight in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia.

Regional Ukrainian officials gave further detail on the strikes within their own areas. Zaporizhzhia governor Ivan Fedorov reported two women killed and seven people injured, with 86 reports of damage to infrastructure, homes and vehicles. Donetsk governor Vadym Filashkin said two people were killed and eight injured, with 1,121 people evacuated from front-line areas, while Kherson's regional military head, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported one death and three injuries alongside damage to five private homes. A 69-year-old man was killed in a drone strike on the Sumy region, where a further ten people were wounded in a separate bomb attack, local authorities said. Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said an overnight wave of strikes on the capital injured five people, and Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 173 attack drones overnight, of which it said 134 were shot down or neutralised.

The United Nations has warned of rising civilian deaths as both sides increase long-range strikes on infrastructure, in what officials describe as the deadliest summer since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Russia had carried out a "double strike" on a logistics facility supplying the McDonald's fast-food chain. US President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly this week that a deal between Moscow and Kyiv was "going to happen", though the Kremlin has said it intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Russia was "escalating every single day".