Ukrainian drones struck four vehicular bridges at Crimea's northwestern entrance overnight on 11 June 2026, quisling official Vladimir Saldo claimed. The strikes are part of Ukraine's most recent mid-range strike push—now at its fourth day—reaching every road corridor between Crimea and mainland Ukraine. The same night, drone attacks also rolled across Sevastopol, Bakhchysarai, Saky, and other Crimean sites.

Four bridges damaged at the Armiansk isthmus

Saldo, the Russian-installed head of occupied Kherson Oblast, named the four targets on his Telegram. They include the automobile bridge in the Perekop-Armiansk area and a bridge near Stavky, Kherson Oblast. Two more bridges near Myrne and Preobrazhenka span the North Crimean Canal. Saldo stated all four spans sustained damage.

Three Crimean northern choke points hit in four days

Ukraine struck the Chonhar bridge on 7 and 9 June, closing Russia's main road link to occupied Crimea, yet the Russians reportedly installed a pontoon bridge next to the severely damaged crossing. On 10 June, Ukrainian drones hit the bridge from Henichesk to Arabat Spit. With both routes fully or partially shut, Russia had rerouted traffic through Armiansk and Perekop — the very corridor struck overnight. DeepState analysts noted that Ukrainian strikes on the bridges are an important part of the blockade of occupied southern Ukraine.

Not only an entrance, but also targets across the peninsula

Russia's occupation governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, claimed 32 drones were shot down over Sevastopol between 22:00 and midnight. He claimed the drones fell near Sevastopol Bay, Cape Fiolent, and Balaklava. The city declared two air alerts during the night and the morning.

Monitoring Telegram channel Krymsky Veter reported machine-gun fire in Pishchane at 21:40 and in Andriivka shortly after, citing subscribers. 

"At 21:40 a machine gun started firing in Pishchane, at 21:48 a machine gun started in Andriivka, after which an anti-aircraft gun fired a couple of bursts," the channel wrote. 

Detonations followed near Cape Fiolent, in Sevastopol, and later in Bakhchysarai. By morning, Krymsky Veter reported explosions and shooting in Saky.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed the destruction of 330 drones over Russia and the occupied territories in the same overnight period.

Update

The First Assault Brigade shared the footage of the strikes:

Ten Russian soldiers from a single regiment are accused of hunting civilians in Kherson with attack drones, and now face war-crimes charges filed in absentia, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported. Investigators say the operators tracked people through the streets and struck ambulances and rescue crews. The 10 are among those participating in a Russian long-lasting terror campaign against Khersoners known as a "human safari." 

The drone hunters of one regiment

Counterintelligence officers built a case against 10 drone operators from the 404th Motorized Rifle Regiment, a territorial-defense unit in Russia's "Dnepr" Group of Forces, the SBU reported. The investigation found that the men tracked residents as they moved along Kherson's streets and launched drones at them. The drones carried shaped-charge and high-explosive fragmentation munitions.

Residents and rights monitors call this campaign a "human safari," the hunting of people going about their ordinary days.

The 10 named operators

The SBU published each suspect's name and military call sign:

• Tsolak Grigoryan, call sign "Boroda"
• Nikita Gubar, "Drovosek"
• Nikolai Denisenko, "Gami"
• Vladimir Klimov, "Klim"
• Vyacheslav Kornenkov, "Skif"
• Viktor Nizhnikov, "Flyaga"
• Ruslan Nugaev, "Dok"
• Vladimir Orlov, "Yakut"
• Ivan Prusachenko, "Prus"
• Oleg Pukhlyakov, "Pulya"

Ambulances and a double strike on rescuers

The documented episodes include attacks on civilian cars and residential blocks, the SBU said. Operators dropped explosives on ambulances at a city hospital. They also carried out a "double" strike on State Emergency Service (DSNS) rescuers who were clearing the aftermath of an earlier Russian shelling. 

UN investigators have described this Russian method in Kherson: a first strike, then a second aimed at the people who come to help. Victims suffered shrapnel wounds, burns, and concussions, and civilian infrastructure took significant damage.

Charged in absentia

Based on the evidence, SBU investigators notified all 10 of suspicion under Article 438 of Ukraine's criminal code, which covers war crimes. The notices were issued in absentia. SBU officers in Kherson Oblast led the investigation with the 79th Border Detachment of the State Border Guard Service (DPSU), under the oblast prosecutor's guidance. The agency said efforts to hold the operators accountable continue.

The case fits a wider pattern Ukrainian prosecutors have documented across the oblast in thousands of proceedings. 

Russian occupation authorities closed the Chonhar bridge linking occupied Kherson Oblast to Crimea for the second time in two days on 9 June, with the Russian-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, claiming another overnight Ukrainian drone strike. The same night, drones swept across occupied Crimea, where a Crimea-monitoring channel reported explosions at a military airfield. Moscow claimed it downed scores of drones, while Ukraine stayed silent.

A bridge to Crimea closed for the second time in two days

Saldo claimed the overnight strike caused fresh damage to the Chonhar bridge and that 20 drones were shot down on the approach. He asked drivers to use alternative routes, and traffic was rerouted through Armiansk and Perekop.

The bridge carries the R-280 highway, which the Russians built to link their Rostov-on-Don to occupied Crimea through occupied Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, one of their main supply lines to the peninsula. 

Drones over Crimea

The strike on the peninsula came the same night, according to RFE/RL. The Crimea-monitoring Telegram channel Krymsky Veter reported an explosion in the Saky district (western Crimea) at 21:14, then an incoming strike in Dzhankoi (northern Crimea) before midnight. Drones also reached Sevastopol (southwestern Crimea), where a strong explosion hit the Kacha airfield at 00:36, followed by a second and third blast in the early hours.

Sevastopol's Russian-installed head, Mykhail Razvozhaev, claimed the military was repelling the attack with air defense and mobile fire groups. The city declared air alerts three times, at 22:33, 00:08, and 06:52, and lifted the last at 07:20. In its morning report, Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses destroyed 140 drones over seven regions, occupied Crimea, and the Azov and Black seas. 

The 7 June Chonhar strike and the wider campaign

The first closure came overnight into 7 June, when Ukrainian FP-2 and Behemoth drones struck the Chonhar bridge. The Falanga multidomain operations center of the 1st separate assault regiment and the 475th separate assault regiment Code 9.2 carried out the strike. Militarnyi reported it was the first known combat use of the Behemoth kamikaze drone, unveiled in late May 2026 by the companies GLEFA and Culver Aerospace. The same day, the occupiers also halted traffic through their "Dzhankoi checkpoint."

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The Crimean Bridge is heavily guarded. Ukraine struck its maritime security layer in the Kerch Strait.

Ukraine's head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Budanov, said in early June that the strikes on Crimea's land corridor are a systematic campaign meant to complicate Russian plans. Ukraine's forces are also hitting the sea routes: the General Staff reported a Russian ship struck near Crimea, and overnight into 4 June, a Russian patrol boat was destroyed near the peninsula. Days before, occupation officials in Sevastopol had reported a similar overnight attack on the city.

Russia's overnight drone and missile barrage on 9 June killed and wounded civilians in the Kharkiv Oblast cities of Chuhuiv and Kharkiv, regional officials reported. More strikes over the past 24 hours left several people dead and dozens wounded elsewhere in Ukraine. Ukraine's Air Force said air defense stopped most of the drones, though missiles and others still reached homes.

Chuhuiv and Kharkiv bear the brunt

A series of Russian missile strikes on Chuhuiv overnight on 9 June killed at least three people and wounded six, the city's mayor, Halyna Minaieva, reported. Fire crews stayed at the impact sites as emergency services worked, she wrote, and the strikes damaged about eight apartment buildings and more than ten detached houses.

In Kharkiv—the regional capital—Russian drone strikes set off fires, damaged at least 18 cars, and blew out windows and facades in residential high-rises, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov reported.

He said 15 people were hurt, among them three children, including a one-year-old boy, and three women were hospitalized. 

Both cities sit dozens of kilometers from the Russian border and have been struck repeatedly through the war.

A barrage of two missiles and 166 drones

Russia launched two Kh-59/69 guided air missiles from Voronezh Oblast and 166 strike drones overnight, Ukraine's Air Force reported. The drones included Shahed types, some jet-powered, along with Gerbera, Italmas, "Banderol" loitering munitions, and "Parodiya" decoys, launched from Oryol, Kursk, Bryansk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, and Millerovo in Russia, occupied Donetsk, and Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea.

By 08:00, air defense had downed or suppressed 146 of the drones. Two missiles and 17 drones struck 18 locations, and debris from intercepted drones fell at eight more. 

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Zaporizhzhia counts the damage from the day before

A Russian drone attack the previous day damaged 11 residential buildings across three districts of Zaporizhzhia, the city council reported. Six apartment blocks and five detached houses in the Khortytskyi, Zavodskyi, and Kosmichnyi districts lost windows, balconies, doors, and roofs to blast waves and debris. No one was hurt, and priority repairs were finished.

A nationwide wave

• Russian attacks over 8 June killed two people in Sumy Oblast and wounded 13 across 21 hromadas, the regional police reported. A 78-year-old woman died in the Konotop hromada and a 71-year-old man in Seredyna-Buda, with a two-year-old boy and an eight-year-old boy among the injured.
• In Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces killed two residents, in Bilozerske and Druzhkivka, and wounded 11 more, nine of them in Sloviansk, Oblast head Vadym Filashkin reported. Police recorded 1,309 attacks on the oblast's front line and residential areas, damaging 53 civilian sites. Hours later, Russia dropped three FAB-250 glide bombs on Sloviansk's outskirts, destroying one home and damaging more than 20.
• In Kherson Oblast, drone and artillery attacks killed one person and wounded 13, including a child, Oblast head Oleksandr Prokudin reported. 
• Drone strikes in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast wounded three people. 
• Russian forces also hit 12 villages in four border hromadas of Chernihiv Oblast, the local border detachment told Suspilne.
• The Russians also attacked communities in Mykolaiv Oblast with drones, where the administration reported no casualties. 

Premature births are rising in several Ukrainian regions near the front line, where war-driven stress on pregnant women appears to be taking a toll, according to the Associated Press (AP). Doctors in cities like Zaporizhzhia keep fragile newborns alive between air raid sirens, in wards with windows boarded up against Russian blast waves. The trend compounds a deepening crisis as fewer Ukrainian women give birth at all.

How far the rate has climbed

In Kherson Oblast, early births climbed from 5.4% of deliveries in 2019 to 9.8% by 2025 — close to twice the rate, UN figures show.  Zaporizhzhia Oblast rose from 5.7% to 7.6%, and Poltava Oblast from 7.7% to 9.8% over the same period. The front line runs through Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Poltava sits farther back but takes regular aerial strikes. Fewer Ukrainian women are giving birth overall, yet a larger share of births now come early, AP reported.

Keeping newborns alive under bombardment

The medical work is delicate and unforgiving. In a Zaporizhzhia intensive care unit, one baby born at 30 weeks weighs just 700 grams, far below the 2,500-gram threshold the World Health Organization (WHO) uses for low birth weight. Marharyta Nekhoroshyva's son arrived even earlier, at 26 weeks and 940 grams. Now nine months old, he still battles chronic breathing problems while she raises him alone, her husband fighting in the war.

Doctors must manage oxygen precisely, since too much risks abnormal blood-vessel growth in the eyes and, in severe cases, blindness, said Dr. Andrii Lobanov, who heads neonatal intensive care at Zaporizhzhia's children's hospital. When sirens sound, staff stay beside the incubators rather than risk moving the babies.

The danger is not abstract. Dr. Nataliia Bohuslavska, who runs the neonatal unit at the city's maternity hospital, opened a shift last month to alarms warning of incoming missiles. Hours later, a Russian glide bomb hit a commercial part of the city and killed at least 12 people. Her team delivered a baby and performed two cesareans that same day, while treating a woman who miscarried after witnessing an airstrike.

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Russia hits two hospitals, kills one woman overnight in strikes on Ukrainian cities

The longer cost

Surviving the delivery is only the start. Premature babies often need years of treatment for respiratory, neurological, and developmental conditions, a heavy bill for a country at war. Hospital services get hit "both literally and metaphorically," said Dr. Andrew Weeks, a maternal-health professor at the University of Liverpool.

It also lands on a country whose birth rate has collapsed to about one child per woman — less than half the 2.1 a population needs simply to hold steady.