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Mourning in Kyiv as the front shifted
Summary
A look back at 3 July 2026, when Ukraine mourned the victims of the Kyiv attack while striking targets in Crimea and Russia reported taking Kostyantynivka.
What did a single day of mourning, a claimed city capture and a wave of strikes on Crimea say about the state of the war? On 3 July 2026, all three unfolded at once.
A day of mourning in Kyiv
Ukraine declared a day of mourning for the victims of the Russian bombardment of Kyiv on 2 July. By 3 July the death toll had risen to 30. The attack on 2 July was a major ballistic missile and drone assault that killed at least 30 people and injured 98 others. It also forced more than 50,000 civilians to shelter underground.
The violence did not stop with the capital. Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine killed at least five people and injured ten others on 3 July. Among the dead were three people in Sumy, where a drone struck their apartment building.
Strikes on Crimea
Ukrainian forces struck nine substations across Russian-occupied Crimea, causing power outages. Saky air base and Gvardeyskoye air base were also targeted, and seven jets were destroyed or damaged.
Crimea has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It served as a base for the Russian occupation of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts after the full-scale invasion began on 24 February 2022. Drones have also been used by Ukraine to strike military infrastructure in Russian territory, according to later accounts of the air war.
A claim in Donetsk Oblast
On the ground, Russia reported that its forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, in Donetsk Oblast. The eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv have been a theatre of operations since the start of the war in February 2022.
Paying for defence
Two days earlier, on 1 July, Ukraine had approved a mechanism for exporting domestically produced weapons and military technologies. The aim was to raise funds for the defence effort against Russia and to attract foreign investment. The rules required that the Ukrainian military's supply needs remain the priority.
Taken together, the events of 3 July showed a war fought on several levels at once: strikes on a capital and on apartment blocks, Ukrainian pressure on infrastructure and airfields in Crimea, a contested claim on the eastern front, and an effort to finance production at home.
