Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky says Putin preparing to bring 30,000 more North Korean troops into battle

Get off the forecourt now,” shouts Dima, 65, an attendant at a petrol station on the main road into Pavlohrad, in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.

As the air raid siren wails, he points to an app on his phone tracking Russian drones — now an essential tool for those working on the country’s increasingly dangerous petrol station forecourts. An arrow is moving across the screen.

“It’s a Russian Geran-3 drone heading in our direction,” he says. “They missed us yesterday, but they are coming back for another try. You must leave immediately.”

Russia has intensified its assault on Ukraine’s retail fuel network over the past month, striking ordinary roadside stations across the east and south of the country.

A fire was from reported Russia’s Engels-2 military airfield in Saratov Oblast overnight, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Eyewitnesses reported a large fire at the air base and published footage of smoke and flames at the site, which is home to Russia’s strategic aircraft, including the Tu-95 long-range bomber, the news outlet said.

Volodymyr Zelensky warned, citing intelligence reports, Vladimir Putin is “preparing the conditions for expanding mobilisation” as Russian losses mount on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian president said in his evening address Moscow enlisted 221,000 people into the Russian military thus far in 2026, while sustaining nearly 225,500 losses among Russian soldiers, including 131,000 killed and almost 93,000 wounded this year alone, the Kyiv Independent reported.

“A significant share of those wounds are severe, as frontline medical care in Russia is catastrophically poor,” Zelensky said.

Twelve people were killed, including five children, in an overnight drone ‌attack on a holiday camp in a Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Russian-installed local authorities said on Saturday, accusing Ukraine of deliberately attacking civilians.

Kyiv did ​not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both Russia ​and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war launched ⁠by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Nineteen people were wounded ​in the attack on the resort area of Kyrylivka, located on ​the coast of the Sea of Azov near the town of Melitopol, said Russian-appointed governor Yevgeny Balitsky.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Ukrainian drones carried out ​the attack on “sleeping people” at the camp. She denounced “inhuman crimes”, ​also referring to an attack on a factory in Russia’s Kirov region on ‌Thursday ⁠which killed six people.

A video posted online of the holiday camp showed shattered buildings, burned-out cars and a pile of rubble next to a swimming pool.

Balitsky said crews from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry ​had extracted two ​survivors, including a ⁠child, and recovered another body from the rubble. He added that rescue operations had been completed.

“The ​enemy saw and understood who it was targeting,” ​he said ⁠on the Telegram messaging app.

Iran’s foreign ministry condemned on Saturday a Ukrainian attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the ​Caspian Sea, saying it resulted in an explosion that killed ‌one sailor and injured another.

Throughout the war, Kyiv has had to counter Iranian-designed drones deployed by Moscow. Kyiv has offered its drone interception expertise to countries in ​the Middle East that have suffered strikes from Iran.

Tehran described the ​attack on its vessel as an act of aggression and ⁠said it would defend its national interests and security, while accusing Kyiv ​of seeking to expand the war in Ukraine.

The Iranian foreign ministry summoned ​Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to convey its protest over what it described as a “hostile and criminal” attack, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported.

The Iranian denunciation coincided with comments ​by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv had noted Russia was passing ​on its satellite observations in the Middle East to Iran to enable it to direct ‌strikes ⁠in the region.

Eleven people have been killed in attacks on holiday camps in the partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian-installed ​local authorities said on Saturday.

The strikes followed a major Russian attack on Friday near Kyiv that killed at least 10 people and wounded around 100 others.

Four children were among 11 people killed in the attack on the resorts in Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed regional head, said, adding that 16 others were wounded.

Romania shot down a foreign drone in its airspace on Friday in the first interception of its kind, amid growing concern over UAVs straying into Nato territory.

An F-16 fighter jet shot down the drone near the town of Padina, in the east, at around 11am after it entered the country’s airspace, officials said, adding that an investigation was underway.

With Ukraine’s petrol stations a key target for Russian drones, customers are advised to spend no more than 10 minutes filling up. Those working on these deadly forecourts tell Harry Stourton in Pavlohrad, eastern Ukraine, how they take their lives in their hands every day they go to work.

Romania’s defense ministry said its forces had “safely shot down” a drone that breached its airspace in an “unpopulated area” near the Ukrainian border.

The drone was “shot down by a Romanian pilot from an F-16 aircraft,” President Nicușor Dan said in a post on Facebook.

It came after a drone was shot down around Padina, northeast of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, on Friday.