MOSCOW: At least 16 people were killed in Ukrainian and Russian strikes on Saturday, in a deadly fifth summer of war as both sides intensify attacks, with diplomacy at a deadlock.

Ukrainian drones also targeted a Siberian oil refinery and the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, escalating strikes deep inside Russia — which it says are aimed to weaken Russia’s war effort and force the Kremlin to negotiate.

The deaths — in Russian-occupied Ukraine, north-eastern Ukraine and Russian border villages — come as the UN has warned of civilians dying in larger numbers recently in the almost 4.5-year war.

US-led talks on ending the fighting are at a deadlock, with Washington focused on the Middle East and Moscow intent on seizing the whole of eastern Ukraine. Russian occupational authorities in southern Ukraine said a Ukrainian strike on an Azov Sea village killed eight people, including two children.

Kazakh leader tells Putin war should end

Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installead head of the Russian occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, said Kyiv had struck “tourist camps” in the seaside village of Kyrylivka.

Balitsky said the strike also wounded 14 people in Kyrylivka — seized by Russia in the first days of its offensive. Kyiv has not yet commented on the strike. Ukraine has intensified attacks in the Azov Sea in recent weeks, targeting Russian ships there.

‘War should end’

Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that fighting in Ukraine should “be stopped”, calling for the conflict to be “frozen”, in a rare face-to-face comment to the Russian leader.

“How to get out of this situation? Nobody knows, because there are the positions of both sides. But, on the other hand, there is such a moment and possibility to freeze all this,” Tokayev told Putin at a Russian-Kazakh summit in Siberia’s Omsk, adding: “It is a shame, young people are dying… All this has to be stopped.”

Siberian oil refinery hit

Kyiv, meanwhile, said a Russian drone strike on its private courier service Nova Poshta in the north-eastern city of Sumy killed three drivers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was a “double-tap” drone strike.

Two more people were killed in southern Ukraine, Kyiv said, as Moscow reported two villagers killed in border areas and one more person in the occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region.

Far from the battlefield, Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in Siberia’s Tyumen region, more than 1,000 miles east of Moscow, in one of its furthest hits so far. Ukraine’s strikes deep inside Russia have caused fuel shortages and disrupted ordinary life in Russia more than at any point during the 4.5-year war. The governor of the Tyumen region, Alexander Moor, said a Ukrainian drone fell “on the territory” of an oil refinery, causing a fire.

Moscow said Ukraine had launched more than 300 drones into Russian territory, including on regions far from the border. Zelensky announced Kyiv had also struck a factory in Kirov — hundreds of kilometres east of Moscow — for the second day in a row, a day after a deadly strike there.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2026