Ukrainian drone strikes targeted a Siberian oil refinery and disrupted an athletic event in Russia’s Urals region on Saturday, as Kazakhstan’s president urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine during a summit in Siberia’s Omsk.
Russian-installed authorities in occupied parts of southern Ukraine reported that a Ukrainian attack on the Azov Sea town of Kyrylivka killed 11 people, including four children. According to Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-appointed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, the strike hit a seaside "tourist camp." Rescue operations were ongoing, and eight people remained unaccounted for. Moscow also reported one fatality in the occupied Kherson region and two deaths in border villages near Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed responsibility for the Siberian refinery attack, confirming Kyiv’s strikes had also damaged a military factory in the Kirov region for the second consecutive day. Local authorities in Kirov reported five deaths from the attack the previous day. Kyiv has framed such operations as retaliatory measures aimed at undermining Russia’s war effort and pressuring Moscow to engage in negotiations.
On the Russian side, the Kremlin confirmed that more than 300 drones were launched by Ukraine into Russian territory on Saturday, including targets in distant regions like Siberia and the Urals. In the Tyumen region of Siberia, a local oil refinery was set on fire as a result of the strike, and an all-Russian athletics competition in Yekaterinburg was halted due to drone threats.
During the summit in Omsk, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev expressed public calls for an end to the conflict, a rare direct admonishment of Putin. “It is a shame, young people are dying... All this has to be stopped,” Tokayev said. The Central Asian leader, an ally of Moscow who has not officially supported Russia’s offensive, described the roots of the war as “not understandable” and called for a “frozen” state of the conflict, proposing a return to negotiations held in Istanbul as a step toward peace.
Putin responded by indicating he would provide Tokayev with further details about the military situation. The Russian president has repeatedly stated Moscow’s intention to capture the remainder of eastern Ukraine by force, while Western-backed peace talks have stalled.
The ongoing conflict, now approaching four-and-a-half years, has seen an escalation in civilian casualties, with the United Nations warning of a recent increase in deaths among non-combatants in Ukraine. Both sides continue to accuse each other of targeting civilians as the war drags on with no diplomatic resolution in sight.