Strikes on Kherson and Zaporizhzhia: civilian toll in mid-July 2023

What did the war look like for residents of southern Ukraine in the days leading up to 14 July 2023? Two reports from 12 July 2023 give a picture of how civilians in regional cities were affected.

In Kherson, Russian shelling killed an 81-year-old man and injured his wife. In Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces struck a residential area and injured 18 civilians, six of them children.

What the reports show

Both incidents were classed as attacks on civilians in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both took place in residential settings, in two regional centres in the south of the country. The casualties ranged from an elderly couple at home to a group that included a substantial number of children.

The reports do not describe the response of regional authorities or any follow-up measures, so the picture is limited to the human toll: one person killed and 20 injured across the two incidents, counting the wife in Kherson and the 18 in Zaporizhzhia.

For a review of regional governance, the significance is that cities such as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia faced direct strikes on housing, which is the setting in which any local administration had to operate in July 2023.