UKRAINE PERSPECTIVE

Kyiv, May 19, 2026. The night of May 18-19 illustrated the fragmented geography of the aerial war Russia is waging against Ukraine. In Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city, two successive waves of drones hit the Novobavarskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts. Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported three injured and at least 25 individual homes damaged, with a residential building also affected. Rescue operations were still underway to free a person potentially trapped under the rubble. The same night, Shahed drones struck Kryvyi Rih, injuring a woman in the Tsentralno-Miskyi district, while a warehouse in the Izmail district, in the Odesa oblast, caught fire. Izmail's port infrastructure was also targeted, with no casualties reported by local authorities. Romania triggered an alert and scrambled two F-16s from the Fetesti base after its radars detected Russian drones operating in the border area. In the morning of May 19, a ballistic missile struck Pryluky, in the Chernihiv oblast, killing three people, including a 15-year-old boy who died in the hospital. Twenty-nine people were injured, including a 14-year-old child. In Hlukhiv, in the Sumy oblast, two men were killed and four people injured in a UAV attack on civilian infrastructure. In the Kherson oblast, a 68-year-old man suffered a traumatic amputation of his leg. In a single day, Donetsk recorded 1,336 enemy strikes along the front line and in residential areas, according to the regional police. Naftogaz confirmed attacks on its facilities in the Chernihiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts for the fourth consecutive day, with critical equipment destroyed. Ukrainian air defense shot down or electronically neutralized 180 of the 209 drones launched on the night of Monday to Tuesday, according to the air force. In response to this campaign, President Zelensky presented a double response. In his May 19 address, he announced the approval of long-range strike plans for June, stating that 'hundreds of our long-range sanctions every day are no longer a sensation.' He cited data from Ukrainian military intelligence indicating a 10% decline in Russian oil refining since the start of the deep strike campaign, and noted that oil wells had to be closed. 'The Russian budget deficit for the first five months of the year has already exceeded what Moscow had planned for the entire year,' he added.