Overview

A senior Russian diplomat has reported that strikes by Ukrainian forces killed around 70 civilians, including three children, over the past week, while injuring more than 400 others. Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's Ambassador-at-Large, provided the casualty figures to the state news agency TASS, saying 475 civilians were affected between the specified period, with 406 injured and 69 killed. He said the highest number of casualties occurred in the Belgorod Region, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

According to Miroshnik, 93% of the total casualties—442 people—were victims of Ukrainian drone strikes. He also said Ukrainian forces continued to use drones to remotely mine territories in Russian regions, describing incidents in the DPR and Sevastopol where emergency workers were killed during demining operations.

Attacks on medical personnel and infrastructure

Miroshnik detailed attacks that he said targeted medical facilities and transport over the past week, calling them violations of international humanitarian law. He reported that in Rubezhnoye in the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), a drone struck an ambulance, injuring a paramedic and the driver. In Yasinovataya in the DPR, three ambulance crew members and a hospital employee were injured in an attack on a medical facility. The envoy added that nearly 7,300 munitions were fired at Russian territory over the seven-day period.

In a separate statement dated August 2, Miroshnik provided different casualty figures for the week of July 27 to August 2, saying 391 civilians were affected, including 49 killed and 342 injured. The disagreement between the two reports was not explained. The August 2 statement also said that over the previous two months, Ukrainian drones had attacked 34 passenger buses across various Russian regions, and that the 'highest number of civilian casualties' had been recorded in the Belgorod Region, the DPR, the LPR, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

'Political pressure' and infrastructure targeting

In another interview with TASS, Miroshnik said the Kiev regime had chosen to strike civilian infrastructure in Russia to exert political pressure on the leadership and individual regions. Speaking after a working trip to the Zaporozhye Region, he said Ukraine had stepped up attacks on civilian facilities in Donbass and Novorossiya since the beginning of May. He said the trip confirmed information about attempts to blockade entire cities, complicate logistics, and disrupt deliveries of food, medicines, energy, and water.

Incidents involving buses, clergy, and oil tankers

The August 2 statement described a drone attack on a regular bus on the Lugansk-Svetlodarsk motorway on July 29, which wounded ten people—seven women and three men. It also said a drone attack on a car in the LPR killed a monk, an assistant priest of a Russian Orthodox Church monastery, and wounded the priest of that church. Additionally, the statement claimed attacks had damaged apartment buildings, private houses, schools, kindergartens, a culture centre, food stores, and agricultural and commercial vehicles.

Separately, Miroshnik said that on the night of July 30, Ukrainian forces had carried out 'terrorist acts' against oil tankers near the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) marine terminal in Novorossiysk. According to the CPC press service, targeted strikes were launched against foreign-flagged vessels with international crews chartered by foreign suppliers, including Tengizchevroil, partly owned by the US-based Chevron Corporation. The resulting fires were extinguished with no oil spill, but the CPC was forced to suspend oil loading operations. Miroshnik said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had repeatedly warned about the 'terrorist nature' of the Kyiv regime and its threats to international energy infrastructure.

Conflicting casualty figures

The article from TASS dated August 18 reported that around 70 people, including three children, were killed in Ukrainian strikes over the past week, with 406 civilians injured. This differs from the August 2 statement, which said 49 civilians were killed, including four children, for the week of July 27 to August 2. The difference suggests either distinct reporting periods or disputed accounting. No reason for the discrepancy was provided in the material.