The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported on Tuesday that at least 293 civilians were killed and 1,990 injured in June 2026, the highest monthly toll since April 2022, the second month of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The mission attributed the surge primarily to long-range attacks by the Russian Federation, which have increasingly targeted urban centres far from the front line. For the first half of the year, the UN confirmed 1,396 civilian deaths in Ukraine, more than double the figure for the same period in 2024.

Ukrainian officials state that the country’s depleted air defences have left cities vulnerable to ballistic missiles and drones. In the latest overnight barrage, Russia launched 135 drones and 10 missiles, mostly ballistic, at Kyiv and other regions, damaging 16 sites in the capital including a school and a commercial facility. Ukraine’s air force reported intercepting five of eight ballistic missiles and 108 of the drones. President Volodymyr Zelensky, noting that seven people were wounded in Kharkiv and three in Chernihiv, called on European allies to approve a new sanctions package this week, arguing that “greater pressure on Russia” is needed. Kyiv has also intensified its own long-range drone strikes inside Russia, targeting weapons production and oil infrastructure in an effort to degrade Moscow’s economic capacity to sustain the war.

Russian authorities, for their part, reported 250 civilian deaths on Russian territory in the first six months of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 121 per cent, according to the UN report. Moscow said a fire broke out at the Afipsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region and drone debris fell in an industrial zone in Salavat, Bashkortostan, following Ukrainian attacks. President Vladimir Putin stated this week that Russia would respond with retaliatory strikes that would be “several times more powerful” and would escalate in scale. Ukrainian military sources claim to be “eliminating” over 1,000 Russian soldiers daily, a figure that includes those killed or too severely wounded to return to duty, underscoring the intensity of ground combat alongside the air war.

The UN mission cautioned that its total tally of 16,431 confirmed civilian casualties in Ukraine since February 2022, including 803 children, is likely a significant undercount, as it cannot verify deaths in areas now under Russian control such as Mariupol and Lysychansk where thousands are believed to have perished. While the front lines have stabilised in recent months, the shift toward long-range strikes has pushed civilian suffering deeper into the country’s interior. The European Union is expected to vote on a fresh sanctions package this week, a step Kyiv frames as essential to closing the air-defence gap.