Cross-border drone strikes kill at least seven civilians

A series of cross-border strikes on Thursday, July 23, 2026, killed at least seven people, including two children, in Ukraine, Russia, and Russian-annexed Crimea, highlighting an intensifying aerial war that is driving civilian casualties to their highest levels in years.

In the Ukrainian city of Pavlograd, a Russian strike killed three people and wounded nineteen others, according to Oleksandr Ganzha, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region. He stated that among the wounded was a two-year-old girl, and all injured were hospitalized. The east-central city, with a pre-war population of roughly 100,000, has been a frequent target throughout the conflict.

Separately, overnight Ukrainian drone attacks struck targets deep inside Russia and Crimea. On the outskirts of the southern Russian city of Voronezh, falling drone debris ignited a fire at a residential home, killing a three-year-old boy. Regional Governor Alexander Gusev said the boy's parents sustained various wounds, and a 19-year-old man was injured in a separate incident in the area. The strikes also damaged a warehouse and several other buildings.

In Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, a drone attack killed one person...