Emergency crews continued searching through the rubble after the attack. Local administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said the rescue operation was ongoing as debris was being cleared from the site.

Zelenskyy described the incident as a double-tap attack, alleging that an initial wave of drones struck the area before a second wave targeted the site as rescue workers responded.

“Attacks like these are nothing less than terrorist acts,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. He later said Ukraine would respond to the shopping mall attack.

Kryvyi Rih has been repeatedly targeted during the more than four-year-old war. One of the city's deadliest attacks occurred in April 2025, when 20 people, including nine children, were killed.

Two other Russian attacks on Friday killed six people in Ukraine. A drone attack in the Kharkiv region killed two women, aged 73 and 66, while another attack in the southern Mykolaiv region killed four people, including three children.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down or suppressed 107 of 135 drones launched by Russia overnight. The attacks came a day after a major Russian missile and drone assault on Kyiv killed 16 people.

Russian forces have intensified ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv, with Ukrainian officials citing a shortage of US-made Patriot air defence interceptors. The United Nations said Kyiv was among the hardest-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 injured.

A Ukrainian drone attack struck an industrial facility in Russia’s Perm region, more than 1,600 kilometres from Ukraine’s border. Zelenskyy said an oil refinery and the Marinovka military airfield in the Volgograd region were also targeted.

Russian online news outlet Astra reported that a Ukrainian drone set fire to a Lukoil-operated oil refinery in Perm. Local officials confirmed damage at an unidentified industrial facility.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted 325 Ukrainian drones over 15 Russian regions and Crimea overnight. It later reported that another 211 drones had been shot down.

Long-range attacks between Russia and Ukraine have escalated as neither side has made significant battlefield progress. Drones and ground robots have increasingly restricted troop and vehicle movements along the roughly 1,250-kilometre front line.