Published on 6/13/2026
The pace of mutual attacks between Russia and Ukraine has escalated during the past hours, with Moscow announcing that it shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones over several regions, while Kiev continued to target military infrastructure and supply lines in the territories under Russia’s control.
Today, Saturday, the Russian authorities announced that a massive fire had broken out at a naval station in the city of Temryuk in the Krasnodar Region (overlooking the Sea of Azov), following an attack by a Ukrainian drone.
The governor of the region, Benjamin Kondratiev, reported that the attack resulted in the death of one person and the injury of three others, noting that emergency teams sent about 96 personnel and more than 30 vehicles to extinguish the fire.
In a related context, a separate attack targeted an industrial area in the town of Kotovo, Volgograd Province, southern Russia, resulting in a fire without revealing the extent of the damage. This comes days after reports that an oil refinery belonging to the Lukoil company in the same area was stopped as a result of a similar strike.
For its part, the Russian army announced that it shot down a total of 177 Ukrainian drones during Friday night over various areas.
Military reinforcements
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia had deployed more than 700,000 soldiers in the war zone in Ukraine, while speaking with soldiers in the Kremlin on the occasion of National Day, which falls on June 12.
Putin believed that the Ukrainian drone raids, which have escalated in recent months, aim to “cause a division in Russian society, sow confusion and cause economic damage,” but he stressed that they “will not succeed in achieving this.”
With Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov at his side, Putin spoke confidently of achieving victory in the “special military operation” he ordered against Ukraine in February 2022, which quickly escalated into Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.
Putin added: “Step by step, not as quickly as we would like, but we are progressing nonetheless; we are progressing every day.”
Last December, Putin referred to Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and stated at the time that they were mostly young people, including those born in the 1990s.
Continuous escalation
On the Ukrainian side, the recent Russian strikes resulted in the death of a woman and the serious injury of another in the “Sumy” border region in northeastern Ukraine, in addition to causing damage to a residential and commercial building, while three other people were injured in the “Mykolaev” region in the south of the country.
In the context of the human cost, a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported a sharp jump in the number of civilian casualties, with at least 274 people killed and 1,763 injured in May, which is a 93% increase compared to the same month last year, when 191 deaths and 865 injuries were recorded.
Regarding the main causes, the report stated that long-range missiles and drones caused 45% of the casualties in major cities such as Kiev and Dnipro, while short-range drones close to the front lines were the largest cause of casualties.
The United Nations has documented the killing of more than 16,000 civilians and the injury of more than 46,000 since the Russian war on Ukraine in February 2022.
