The strike on a resort near Gelendzhik also wounded around 60 people and damaged civilian infrastructure, according to local officials
Published 3 Aug, 2026 12:23
| Updated 4 Aug, 2026 11:26
The death toll from a Ukrainian drone attack on a beach at a Russian Black Sea resort has risen to eight people after a fourth child victim succumbed to their injuries, local officials have said.
The strike on Monday near the resort of Gelendzhik also wounded several dozen people and damaged civilian infrastructure, Krasnodar Region Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on the day of the attack.
He described the incident as a “tragedy” deliberately targeting civilian sites after debris from a downed drone fell on the resort village of Arkhipo-Osipovka.
“What happened today was a deliberate strike by the Kiev regime against civilians with no connection whatsoever to military infrastructure. This cynical and inhumane terrorist attack targeting children cannot be justified,” he wrote on Max.
On Tuesday, Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said that a fourth youngster succumbed to his wounds at a hospital, taking the death toll to eight.
Earlier in the day, the Krasnodar Region operation headquarters updated the figures on the number of wounded, saying it had risen to 58. Twenty-one of them, including three children, required hospitalization, with the rest being released after receiving treatment, it said.
Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik shared footage of the attack on social media on Monday, showing the moment a drone struck a densely packed beach near Gelendzhik, sending beachgoers scrambling for cover.
Miroshnik later said that 49 civilians have killed and more than 340 others wounded in Ukrainian attacks inside Russia over the past week. The large majority of the victims were hit by drones, he said.
This is not the first time Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian resorts. Just last week, 12 people, including five children, were killed when drones struck a hotel in the town of Kirillovka in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region. The popular holiday destination lies more than 100 km from the nearest front line and has no military facilities nearby.
Another major tragedy occurred in 2024, when four people, including two children, were killed and more than 150 others injured after the Ukrainian military fired five US-supplied ATACMS missiles at the Crimean city of Sevastopol. Russian air defenses intercepted four of the missiles, but a fifth, though damaged, veered off course and detonated its cluster warhead over a crowded beach.
Ukraine has sharply intensified its long-range drone campaign in recent weeks, targeting oil facilities, warehouses, residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure deep inside Russian territory as Kiev’s forces continue to suffer setbacks on the battlefield. Last month, Russia announced the capture of the key Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka in northwestern Donbass, before launching an offensive toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last two major cities in the region still under Ukrainian control.
Moscow has described Kiev’s drone raids as terrorist attacks deliberately targeting civilians. One of the deadliest recent incidents came in May, when Ukrainian drones struck a student dormitory in the Donbass town of Starobelsk, partially collapsing the five-story building and killing 21 people.
Russia has also stepped up long-range strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure, describing the campaign as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian and energy facilities. Moscow maintains that it targets only military sites and infrastructure supporting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Meanwhile, Russia has long argued that the Ukraine conflict is a NATO-backed proxy war against Moscow, pointing to the scale of Western military and financial aid to Kiev, as well as the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia over its military operation. Commenting on Monday’s strike, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reiterated that countries supporting Kiev have become “sponsors of terrorism.”
“The sponsors of terrorism are NATO countries. Not long ago, NATO and the EU proclaimed zero tolerance for terrorism. Today, they themselves have become part of international terrorist activity,” Zakharova said, describing the Kiev leadership as a “terrorist gang.”
