Ukraine strikes Russian rocket facility in Samara, intensifying long-range attacks

Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale attack on industrial infrastructure in Russia's southwestern Samara region on Saturday, a Russian official said, as Kyiv intensifies long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory.

Ivan Noskov, head of the regional capital Samara, said air defence systems had repelled a 'massive' missile attack, with 'localised damage' to industrial sites. He added that those injured had received medical assistance, but did not provide further details.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that Kyiv's forces had struck the Progress Centre in Samara, a facility operating under the Russian space agency Roscosmos that produces rocket technology and electronics. He said the strike used Ukraine's domestically built Flamingo missiles to hit a target approximately 900 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Zelenskyy also said Russia's Savasleyka air base, about 700 kilometres from the front line, had been hit.

'Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia — through concrete damage to specific facilities,' Zelenskyy wrote.

The attack is part of a broader Ukrainian campaign to strike deeper into Russian territory. According to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent conflict monitor, Ukraine launched three times as many long-range strikes in July as it did in January. Most Ukrainian weapons have a range of under 200 kilometres, but the recent increase in longer-range attacks has forced the Russian military to stretch its air defence network across a wider area, potentially creating vulnerabilities.

Russia's Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that its forces had shot down 598 Ukrainian drones over 19 Russian regions, as well as over the Black and Azov Seas and the annexed peninsula of Crimea. In a separate incident, two people — including a nine-year-old child — were wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a private home in the town of Shatura in the Moscow region, according to local governor Andrey Vorobyov.

The conflict continues to take a heavy toll on civilians. In southeastern Ukraine, a Russian strike on an apartment block in the town of Marhanets on Saturday killed a three-month-old baby and wounded 11 others, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration. Russia's defence ministry also said it had targeted warehouses and infrastructure at the Ukrainian ports of Odesa, Izmail and Yuzhnyi.

Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched 152 drones over the country on Saturday, of which 124 were destroyed. The repeated attacks on both sides underscore the enduring intensity of the conflict, now in its fifth year, with no end in sight despite diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire.