Nearly 8,500 Russian civilians killed in Ukrainian attacks since February 2022: Moscow

Moscow: Ukrainian military strikes have claimed the lives of nearly 8,500 civilians in Russia since February 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik said at a briefing.

From February 2022 to June 30, 2026, the total number of casualties reached 30,913, including about 8,434 fatalities, Miroshnik said on Friday (local time).

Miroshnik said Ukrainian attacks had damaged civilian infrastructure across 42 Russian regions over the past three months, reports Xinhua news agency.

Citing several high-profile incidents, he highlighted an attack on a college in Starobelsk, an attack on a bus carrying Belarusian children in the Bryansk region, and an attack on a civilian passenger bus in Yenakiyevo.

Miroshnik also noted that a total of 373 children have been killed and 1,845 injured since 2014.

Russia has condemned Ukraine’s strikes on civilian targets and delivered an official diplomatic note to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to call for an international probe into these incidents.

Meanwhile, in a separate development, Russian air defence forces have shot down 28 drones targeting Moscow since the beginning of Friday, according to updates from Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

In his latest update, the mayor said on social media that eight more drones heading toward the Russian capital were shot down on Friday night.

“Emergency service crews are working at the debris site,” Sobyanin said.

Additionally, Russia claimed that its armed forces had taken full control of the city of Konstantinovka in eastern Ukraine.

“The main news is that Konstantinovka has been completely taken,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying on Friday.

Konstantinovka is a key stronghold located in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Following the announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the capture of Konstantinovka “carries great strategic significance,” while visiting one of the temporary command posts of the joint force grouping on Friday.

“As we all know, the city is a key transportation hub and a major industrial centre of Donbas,” Putin said, adding that Russian forces have taken control of 133 settlements and more than 3,000 square km across Donbas and Novorossiya since the start of 2026.

The more Ukraine attempts to strike civilian facilities in Russia, the more Russia must do to protect those facilities and its civilians, Putin noted, adding that “the more such attempts the enemy makes, the larger the security buffer zone we will have to establish in the adjacent territory.”

IANS