Drones, missiles and a resignation: 12 May 2026

What did the war look like on 12 May 2026? It was a day on which drones struck in both directions, and the consequences reached beyond the front line.

In Kryvyi Rih, in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russian drone strikes killed six people and injured seven others, including a nine-month-old child. The attack was one of the Russian strikes on civilians recorded that day.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the military had attacked several gas facilities in Orenburg Oblast, Russia. The statement fitted a pattern of Ukrainian attacks on targets inside Russia.

A political cost in Latvia

Two days earlier, on 10 May 2026, Andris Sprūds resigned as Latvian defence minister after Ukrainian drones violated Latvian airspace during an attack on Russia. The resignation showed that the drone campaign had political consequences for a neighbouring state, one that is not a party to the war. Drones, which may be remotely piloted or operate with varying degrees of autonomy, are used by many nations, and their flight paths do not always stay within the borders of the countries fighting.

Moscow's nuclear signal

On 12 May 2026 Russian president Vladimir Putin said Russia would deploy new Sarmat nuclear missiles this year. He made the statement on a day when Ukraine was reporting strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and Russian drones were hitting a Ukrainian city.

What the day showed

The events of 12 May 2026 fell into three strands: civilian casualties in Ukraine, Ukrainian strikes on Russian gas facilities, and spillover that cost a NATO-member defence minister his post. Taken together, they showed the war's reach extending into airspace and politics beyond Ukraine and Russia, while Moscow pointed to its strategic arsenal.