Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations that each side’s attacks caused civilian deaths, with officials in the Moscow region saying five people were killed there while authorities in Ukraine said a similar number, including two children, died at various sites across the country.
Russia has relentlessly pounded civilian areas of Ukraine, even though Moscow insists its forces target only military facilities.
Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion more than four years ago, Ukraine has developed long-range drones that can strike deep inside Russia.
In the past year, its forces have battered oil facilities, major storage depots and other key infrastructure.
More than 16,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the war began, the United Nations said last month in its most recent casualty report, with the vast majority occurring in areas under the Ukrainian government’s control.
Casualties have risen steadily each year.
The UN children’s agency on Tuesday urged both countries to uphold international humanitarian law requiring the protection of children, citing recent deaths in Russia’s Belgorod and Krasnodar regions, as well as in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions.
“Attacks that kill and injure children must stop,” Unicef said in a statement.
Meanwhile, escalating attacks on shipping in the Black Sea by both sides have reawakened fears that global food security could be put at risk.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video on social media that he said showed a Russian drone hunting a man selling vegetables from a street stall in the southern city of Kherson.
The video shows the man trying to flee the drone as it circles his vehicle, follows him and ultimately strikes the car where he was trying to hide.
He suffered wounds to his back, legs and arms, according to an interview he gave to the Kherson regional military administration.
Russia’s Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to an Associated Press request for comment.
Drone attacks on civilians have surged since the war began, with 967 people killed, including 10 children, and nearly 7,000 people injured, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Tuesday.
Russian drone operators track and strike civilians going about daily activities, according to previous AP reporting.
A UN commission concluded in October 2025 that such attacks amounted to crimes against humanity.
“The world must see this,” Mr Zelensky said.
“It must see every piece of evidence that Russia has gone mad and that its soldiers take pleasure in killing and abusing civilians.”
The death toll from a drone strike on Monday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Arkhipo-Osipovka rose to seven, including four children, regional authorities said.
On Tuesday morning, Krasnodar regional authorities updated the number of wounded to 58, with 21 of them in hospital.
Footage circulating online showed a drone slamming into a crowded beach, with what sounded like rapid gunfire ringing in the background.
A Ukrainian drone attack in the Moscow region, which surrounds but does not include the Russian capital, killed five people and wounded 10 others on Tuesday morning, the region’s governor Andrei Vorobyov said.
Most damage from the attack occurred in the Chekhov municipal district, where several fires erupted at the Novoselki industrial zone, Mr Vorobyov said.
In the latest in a string of attacks on Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries said on Tuesday that its warehouse in the Leningrad region, which lies adjacent to St Petersburg, was on fire.
In the Tver region, located between Moscow and St Petersburg, drone debris inflicted “partial” damage on a wall of a Wildberries warehouse in the village of Emmaus, the region’s governor Vitaly Korolyov said.
Ukrainian drones have over the past 18 days targeted 15 Wildberries warehouses, 13 of which have caught fire, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi said.
Ukrainian officials say the company provides goods that can be used by the Russian military.
Kyiv is also keen to unsettle the Russian public with high-profile attacks.
Overall, the Russian Defence Ministry reported on Tuesday morning that its air defences shot down 320 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that its forces the previous night “continued to strike Ukrainian ports, vessels, and port infrastructure” used by Kyiv’s army.
In the port of Chornomorsk in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, the Russian military said it struck an automobile components plant and a port terminal, where the Ukrainian forces “were repairing military vehicles and storing ammunition and fuel”.
Meanwhile, a bulk carrier with military cargo was damaged in the southern port of Mykolaiv, while another ship unloading military cargo was hit in Pivdennyi, another Ukrainian Black Sea port, according to the statement.
The ministry also said two bulk carriers taking weapons and military equipment to Ukrainian ports were damaged at sea, south of Odesa.
Turkey on Tuesday repeated its appeal for both Russia and Ukraine to ensure the safety of navigation in the Black Sea after two Turkish-owned ships were attacked by drones after leaving the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry statement expressed concerns that the war is increasingly spreading across the Black Sea, threatening civilian shipping, and warned such incidents could have broader consequences, including for the global food supply, as important amounts of grain, fertilisers and other key produce moves through those waters.
Russian attacks on Mykolaiv, including its port, killed an 89-year-old woman and wounded seven other people aged between two and 83, Ukrainian regional officials said.
The Russian strike on civilian infrastructure in southern Odesa region destroyed a private home and wounded two people, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa regional military administration.
Elsewhere, in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, six Russian glide bombs killed three people, including two girls aged five and 10 and an elderly woman, Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration, said.
Russian forces also struck Kharkiv and 18 towns and villages across the northern region over the previous 24 hours, killing one person and injuring seven others, including an eight-year-old child, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.
Strikes in Balakliia, also in the Kharkiv region, significantly damaged an apartment building, a library, three stores and more than 10 houses, wounding two women, local authorities said.
Two 250kg (550lbs) glide bombs struck Kramatorsk in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine on Tuesday morning, injuring 22 people, local officials said.
Kramatorsk sits at the northern end of Ukraine’s Fortress Belt, where Western analysts say Russia’s army is making a renewed effort to break through after four years of attrition.
Vadym Filashkin, head of the regional military administration, urged people remaining near the front line to evacuate, saying evacuation is free and that authorities would help with transportation, housing and other necessary support.
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