Ukrainian drone kills two Russian children, officials say, after deadly attacks on Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih

A Ukrainian drone attack on Saturday hit a house in southern Russia, killing two children and injuring their parents, officials say, while a daytime Russian ballistic missile attack killed two outside the capital Kyiv.

“This morning, civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in the Yeysk district came under a drone attack,” says Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.

“As a result of yet another vile and cynical strike … two children were killed, and two adults are in the hospital,” he adds.

A separate Ukrainian drone attack on the central region of Samara killed one person, the local governor says.

Around lunchtime on Saturday, Russia fired ballistic missiles toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian air force says — killing two and wounding eight in the Boryspil district, on the eastern edge of the capital.

Overnight Russian attacks had already killed two — one in Kyiv and one in Zaporizhzhia, close to the front line.

Meanwhile, in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rih, the regional governor says four people are still missing after Russian drones smashed into a busy shopping center on Friday afternoon.

Sixteen people have been confirmed killed and more than 100 wounded.

The strike set the mall ablaze and sent blood-covered victims running for the streets, only for a second drone to fly in around half an hour later — a double-tap attack blasted by Zelensky as “cynical and despicable.”

Mourners placed flowers and letters on the grass outside the mall in a makeshift memorial on Saturday. An AFP reporter saw machinery piling up twisted and charred metal.

Supermarket shelves stacked with products blackened from the fire were stacked up beneath a cratered ceiling and behind blown-out windows.

The strikes mark the latest escalation in the four-and-a-half-year conflict. The United Nations reported that the civilian death toll so far this year had risen to its highest level since the first months of the war.