Russian forces have taken control of the two villages in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, state-run RIA news agency reported on Sunday (August 9, 2026), citing the Russian Defence Ministry.
Political Context
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has for months lobbied other countries, especially the US, to send Ukraine more Patriot systems made scarcer by the Iran war, arguing they are crucial for defending civilians. The Ukrainian military’s General Staff, in a late evening report, said Kyiv’s forces had repelled 24 attacks around Kostiantynivka, Illinivka and other centres. In Russia’s border region of Belgorod, Ukrainian drones killed five people and injured two dozen others including a 4-year-old boy, according to the regional administration. Russian missiles struck a high-rise apartment block in Kharkiv’s Saltivskyi district, killing two people and injuring 13, according to regional head Oleh Syniehubov. Russia’s Defence Ministry on Sunday (August 9) claimed its overnight strikes hit drone warehouses in the Kharkiv region, as well as fuel depots and stores of other materiel belonging to Ukraine’s armed forces at the port of Odesa. It said its forces had shot down 153 Ukrainian drones during the night, including over Russian-occupied Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.
Russian commanders said last month their forces had seized Kostiantynivka, but Ukrainian officials have disputed the claim. Eight more people were injured in Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa after “dozens of missiles and drones” struck the city and surrounding region, according to local administration head Oleh Kiper. In Russia’s Belgorod region, the authorities said Ukrainian drone strikes damaged 29 apartment blocks and five private houses, as well as administrative buildings and unspecified “commercial facilities.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in his nightly video address on Sunday made no reference to changes in frontline positions, but singled out for praise Ukrainian forces fighting in specific areas, notably Dobropillia, Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk.
