Russian drones kill woman, child in Sumy as UN warns of rising civilian deaths
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- Russian drones struck a home in Sumy region, killing a 29-year-old woman and her 9-year-old son and wounding four others, including the boy's father and grandmother with severe burns.
- The UN human rights monitoring mission in Kyiv reported July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since March 2022, with at least 437 killed and 2,610 wounded — a 70% increase over July 2024.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would use "much harsher methods" to destroy Western military aid flowing into Ukraine, reiterating Putin's refusal of Trump's ceasefire demand until a "long-term, reliable and sustainable settlement" is reached.
- A Russian glide bomb tore through six floors of a 10-storey apartment block in Donetsk, killing one and injuring 16; Zelenskyy said Russia now launches roughly 220 glide bombs daily at front-line settlements.
- Ukraine struck Russia's port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region — more than 800 km inside Russia — briefly igniting a fire at one of Moscow's biggest oil and gas export terminals, while also hitting a Wildberries warehouse in Tver.
- NATO Italian Eurofighter jets shot down a drone in Latvian airspace that Latvia attributed to "Russian electromagnetic warfare," and a separate drone crashed in Romania's Tulcea County just 5 km from the Ukrainian border.
- UN human rights monitors have documented at least 16,874 Ukrainian civilian deaths and 51,273 wounded since Russia's February 2022 invasion, including 820 children.
Why it matters: Civilian casualties jumped 70% year-over-year in July, and Russia's explicit threat to escalate — paired with drones now breaching NATO airspace in Latvia and Romania — shows the conflict is spilling beyond Ukraine's borders while Washington sidelines peace efforts to focus on Iran.
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