The comparison is what makes the number legible.
Ukrainian authorities reported on July 26 that 377 civilians were killed and 2,129 injured during July [1]. That is the deadliest month for civilians since April 2022 - the month of Bucha and the height of the Mariupol siege, when the invasion was four weeks old and Russian forces were still in the suburbs of Kyiv.
Four years later, in a war widely described as static, the civilian toll has returned to its opening-phase level.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave the weapons count for the preceding week: roughly 1,700 drones, more than 1,630 guided aerial bombs, and more than 50 ballistic missiles. 'We must undercut Russia's gamble on ballistic terror,' he said [1].
The composition matters more than the total. Guided aerial bombs are cheap and launched from inside Russian airspace, which makes them very hard to intercept. Ballistic missiles arrive too fast for most systems. A campaign weighted toward those two is built around the limits of Ukrainian air defence rather than around targets.
The single night into July 26 shows the pattern at ground level. Seven ballistic missiles and 136 drones. Missile debris struck an 18-storey residential building in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district, setting fire to the seventh and eighth floors; Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported three wounded in the capital [2].
A drone hit a supermarket in Chernihiv, killing two people - one of them nine years old - and wounding 25. At least eight civilians were killed across Ukraine in those 24 hours [2].
