What 11 February 2026 showed about the war's reach
A retrospective on a day of strikes in Kharkiv Oblast and drone attacks on a Russian refinery, set against the preceding days of fighting.
What did the war look like on 11 February 2026? In the reports from that day, it appeared as strikes in both directions: a Russian airstrike on a town in Kharkiv Oblast and a Ukrainian drone attack on a refinery in Russia.
In Kharkiv Oblast, a Russian airstrike on Bohodukhiv killed four people and injured two others. The strike came after a run of attacks on civilians in the preceding days.
On 10 February 2026, a Russian airstrike on Sloviansk, in Donetsk Oblast, killed two people. A day earlier, on 9 February 2026, Russian forces had launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine using drones and ballistic missiles. It killed at least six people, including a 10-year-old boy and his mother in Kharkiv, and injured dozens of others.
On the ground, the front in Kharkiv Oblast was also moving. On 9 February 2026, Russian troops launched a mechanised assault east of the city of Kupiansk and captured the towns of Petropavlivka and Stepova Novoselivka. That assault belonged to the wider Kupiansk offensive: a series of engagements around the city and along the Oskil river, up to the border settlement of Topoli. Offensive operations in that 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.
The other side of the day came overnight into 11 February 2026. Ukrainian drones attacked the Volgograd refinery in Volgograd Oblast, Russia. Multiple explosions were reported, and the refinery was ablaze. Volgograd International Airport was closed in response to the attack.
Taken together, the reports from 9 to 11 February 2026 show a war fought on several levels at once: ballistic missiles and drones against Ukrainian cities, mechanised assaults on the front line, and Ukrainian drone strikes on industrial sites inside Russia. For the residents of Bohodukhiv, Sloviansk and Kharkiv, the day's toll was counted in the dead and injured.
