Moscow:
Indian-origin billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s ArcelorMittal mining and metallurgical complex in Kryvyi Rih — Ukraine’s largest integrated steel unit — came under a missile attack by Russia. The strike, which came in retaliation for a Ukrainian drone barrage, killed two people, injured 14 workers, and forced a partial halt to production after damaging core energy and blast-furnace operations.
Ukraine earlier launched hundreds of drones across Russia, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war. Moscow’s regional governor Andrey Vorobyov described the assault as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory”. Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted 822 drones across the country overnight.
An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, Vorobyov said, adding that another Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse –Russia’s largest online retailer and a company controlled by the country’s richest woman, billionaire Tatyana Kim– in the town of Podolsk.
Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself.
Another drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local Governor Yury Slyusar said. The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire.
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New Front in War
Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones targeting military industries and energy facilities.
It has also increasingly attacked logistics giant Wildberries’ depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise. Those attacks have brought the war home to the Russian public nearly 4 and a half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
With fighting at the front at a near standstill and talks frozen, the warring countries have significantly stepped up long-range attacks deep behind each other’s lines, pushing the civilian deaths to their highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022.
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Russia’s Retaliation
In Ukraine, a barrage of Russian drones and missiles killed two people at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, on Sunday.
ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine’s largest steel producer, confirmed that one of its sites had been hit in a missile attack and that operations had been partially suspended.
Russian forces struck the ArcelorMittal Krivoy Rog steel plant in Ukraine’s Krivoy Rog overnight with Iskander-M missiles, damaging key production facilities and halting operations. #KrivoyRog pic.twitter.com/7a6m4sTh7p
— WW3 Watchtower (@WW3Watchtower) August 16, 2026
Another strike on Kryvyi Rih on Sunday killed one person.
Strikes also hit other regions, killing two people in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, one in the border region of Sumy and another in Donetsk in the east.
Russian attacks also sparked fires throughout Kyiv, wounding six people. A blaze took hold at one of the city’s largest book markets, tearing through kiosks huddled close to the Pochaina metro station.
In a social media post on the overnight raid, Zelensky said that “wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure.”
Over the past week, he said, Ukrainian cities had been pummelled by “more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles,” as he renewed his appeal to allies for more air defence.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence has claimed that it had targeted a metallurgical plant in Kryvyi Rih and several military-industrial sites in Kyiv, including a manufacturing facility for Ukraine’s Flamingo missiles. The domestically produced missiles are increasingly key to Ukraine’s long-range attacks on Russia, with Zelenskyy announcing last week that Kyiv had used the weapons to attack a rocket research and production center in Samara, approximately 900 kilometers (560 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
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Spillover in Europe
Romania’s Ministry of National Defence, meanwhile, said that a Spanish Air and Space Force F-18 fighter jet shot down a drone that had entered Romanian airspace. The drone’s entry into the NATO member’s airspace was detected by surveillance systems at 4:44 am on Sunday, the ministry said, about 24 kilometers north of the eastern city of Galati near the border with neighbouring Moldova.
Moldova is a landlocked country between Ukraine and Romania.
The spate of drone incidents comes weeks after Romanian pilots shot down three drones over three days as Russia intensified attacks against Ukraine near the border. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Romania has reported dozens of drone incidents, including some that have crashed and exploded on its territory.
(With inputs from AP and AFP)
