GENEVA – Civilian casualties in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine rose 37 per cent in the first half of 2026, the United Nations said July 21.

Russia and Ukraine – who both deny targeting civilians – have stepped up daily strikes on each other in recent months, as US-led talks on ending the nearly four-and-a-half year conflict remain stalled.

Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva that the unit documented 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 injured.

That was a 37 per cent increase from the same period in 2025 and “almost doubled what we documented in 2024”, she said.

Bell said the escalation was in part being driven by increasing use of long-range ballistic missiles and drones, “affecting densely populated urban areas that are far away from the front line”.

She pointed for instance to a missile strike earlier in July in Kyiv that hit a residential complex, collapsing an entire section of the building and killing 19 civilians and injuring 76 others.

Call for investigations

Bell said there appeared to also be a significant increase in civilian casualties taking place in Russia as a consequence of Ukraine’s increasing use of long-range weapons firing into the country.

Pointing to credible Russian open-source reporting, she said 250 civilians had been killed and 1,596 injured in attacks inside Russia during the first six months of 2026.

“This represents a 121 per cent increase in civilian casualties in the Russian Federation compared with last year,” she said.

The second driver of the swelling civilian casualty toll was the widespread use of short-range drones and glide bombs in fro...