Officials report deaths in Ukrainian strikes on occupied areas and Russian border village

Ukrainian strikes on Russian-occupied territory and a Russian border village killed six people on Sunday, 26 July, officials said, while Kyiv said a Russian attack on Kharkiv killed another person.

Russian occupation authorities in Moscow-held Gorlivka, in eastern Ukraine, said a Ukrainian drone strike killed four people. Moscow-installed officials in the occupied part of Ukraine's Kherson region said one person was killed there. Authorities in Russia's border region of Belgorod said one person was killed by a Ukrainian drone in the village of Smorodino.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said emergency workers were at a residential building in Kharkiv that had been hit by a Russian drone attack. He said one person was killed and nine others were injured, including two children. Zelensky also said Kyiv had been struck by ballistic missiles and that three people were injured.

The attacks came after officials reported 20 people killed on both sides of the frontline the previous day. Moscow said on Saturday that a Ukrainian strike on an occupied town on the Azov Sea killed 12 people.

The report said civilian deaths have risen significantly this summer in the war, which Russia launched in 2022. It said both Kyiv and Moscow have intensified attacks while US-led talks on ending the fighting have stalled. The Kremlin occupies areas of eastern and southern Ukraine and has repeatedly said it intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine by force.