Russian attack on Ukraine kills two - as Iran blames Kyiv for attack on ship
Ukraine's air force said Russia had launched seven ballistic missiles and 136 drones overnight
Kyiv came under ballistic missile attack from Russian forces early on Sunday, while two people were killed in bombardments across other regions.
Listen to this article
Ukraine's air force said Russian forces had targeted the capital with ballistic missiles, as explosions rocked the city.
In its morning note, the air force said Russia had launched seven ballistic missiles and 136 drones at Ukraine overnight. One person was killed in the city of Kharkiv and another in Zaporizhzhia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned on Friday that Russian attacks were likely over the next 48 hours.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one blaze had broken out in an apartment block in the city centre after the attacks. Three people were wounded in the capital, and unofficial social media channels showed footage of fires burning.
Read more: Romania shoots down third Russian drone, as president calls breaches 'intolerable'
All the necessary emergency services have been deployed at the site of an attack drone strike on residential buildings in Kharkiv. Tragically, one person was killed, and nine others were injured, including two children. My condolences to their families and loved ones. State… pic.twitter.com/z51yU1ZtOz
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 26, 2026
Russia, for its part, said four people were killed by a Ukrainian drone strike in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Horlivka.
Russian-installed Mayor Ivan Prikhodko said four civilians had been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike, Russia's TASS news agency reported. Prikhodko gave no further details.
On Saturday, Russian-installed authorities accused Ukraine of deliberately attacking civilians after 12 people were killed in a drone attack on a holiday camp in a Russian-held part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.
Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war launched by Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Thousands of civilians have died, most of them Ukrainians killed in Russian attacks.
Separately, Iran's Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of attacking an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, saying one sailor was killed and another injured in an attack it described as "hostile and criminal", state news agency IRNA said.
The Iranian denunciation came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia was passing its satellite observations in the Middle East on to Iran to enable it to direct strikes in the region.
Throughout the war in Ukraine, Kyiv has had to counter Iranian-designed drones deployed by Moscow. Kyiv has offered its drone interception expertise to countries in the Middle East that have suffered strikes from Iran.
Tehran described the attack on its vessel as an act of aggression and said it would defend its national interests and security, while accusing Kyiv of seeking to expand the war in Ukraine.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine's chargé d'affaires in Tehran to convey its protest over what it described as a "hostile and criminal" attack, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported.
Zelenskyy had earlier said that Ukraine's forces struck a Russian warship and vessels used for transporting Iranian-linked military cargo in the Caspian Sea.
The Ukrainian president, in subsequent remarks posted on X, said Kyiv had recorded since the beginning of July "active Russian satellite surveillance of the Gulf states and U.S. military facilities located there. These images subsequently appear in Iran."
"At the same time, there is a clear correlation between Russia’s satellite imagery of these sites and Iranian strikes — both before the attacks, in preparation for them, and afterward, to assess the damage inflicted," Zelenskyy said.
He said that on July 19 and 20 alone, Russian satellite observation had included four air bases: two in Bahrain, one in Jordan and one in Kuwait.