Home › Opinion › What did 10 February 2026 show about the war?
What did 10 February 2026 show about the war?
Summary
A retrospective on a day of strikes in Donetsk Oblast, following a heavy overnight assault and gains near Kupiansk.
What did the war look like on 10 February 2026? It was a day of continuing civilian losses, set against the aftermath of a large Russian attack and fresh fighting in Kharkiv Oblast.
On 10 February 2026, a Russian airstrike on Sloviansk, in Donetsk Oblast, killed two people. It was one more entry in the pattern of Russian attacks on civilians recorded during the war.
The attack that came first
The day followed a far larger strike. On 9 February, Russian forces launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine using drones and ballistic missiles. At least six people were killed, among them a 10-year-old boy and his mother in Kharkiv, and dozens more were injured.
Movement near Kupiansk
The front line was also shifting. On 9 February, Russian troops launched a mechanised assault east of the city of Kupiansk and captured the towns of Petropavlivka and Stepova Novoselivka. The Kupiansk offensive is a series of engagements around the city and along the Oskil river, from Kupiansk through Dvorichna to the border settlement of Topoli in Kharkiv Oblast. Its aim is to capture Kupiansk and territory along the river. Operations in this direction restarted after Russian forces attacked Kupiansk in late November 2024. They intensified after Russian forces established several bridgeheads on the western bank of the Oskil in early 2025.
A case on the Russian side
A separate development concerned Russia itself. On 8 February, a 65-year-old man accused of shooting and critically injuring lieutenant general Vladimir Alekseyev on 6 February was detained in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He was deported to Moscow.
What the day adds up to
Taken together, these reports from 8 to 10 February 2026 show three things: strikes reaching Ukrainian cities from Kharkiv to Sloviansk, Russian ground pressure east of Kupiansk, and an arrest abroad linked to the shooting of a senior Russian officer. The Sloviansk strike was smaller in scale than the attack a day earlier, but it killed two more civilians.
