Ukraine struck a Russian drone-control relay station and two other military targets in occupied Crimea and the occupied south overnight on 12 August, its General Staff said. Explosions rolled across the peninsula through the night, Sevastopol declared repeated air-raid alerts, and towns across occupied Crimea lost power, according to Ukrainian monitoring channels and Russian occupation authorities. 

Russia launches its attack drones at Ukraine from sites inside Russia and across occupied territory every day, and relay stations let it steer those drones over long distances. Occupied Crimea is the logistical spine of Russia's hold on southern Ukraine, the funnel through which fuel, ammunition, and reinforcements reach the front, and its fixed airfields, power plants, and control stations sit within reach of Ukraine's growing long-range arsenal.

What the General Staff says was hit

Ukraine's Defense Forces struck three targets overnight, the General Staff reported. The first was a ground relay station used to control Geran and Gerbera attack drones near Olenivka in occupied Crimea. The others were a Russian repair unit near Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast and a staging point for an enemy drone unit near Marivka in Luhansk Oblast.

Hitting these sites weakens Russia's ability to command its attack drones, keep its military vehicles running, and sustain its units, the General Staff said. 

Euromaidan Press could not independently verify the strikes and damage.

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Russia flies these drones through a chain of ground repeaters, often mounted on mobile-operator towers or similar tall structures, boost the control signal so operators inside Russia can steer Geran and Gerbera drones over Ukraine from hundreds of kilometers away. Kyiv has dismantled similar relay networks before, including one Russia had built on towers and rooftops in Belarus.

Explosions and blackouts across occupied Crimea

Sevastopol declared three air-raid alerts, and the Russian-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev claimed Russian forces downed more than 30 drones, with the heaviest activity over the Balaklava district and no one hurt.

The Ukrainian monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported explosions in Feodosia and Kerch, and drones close to the Kacha and Belbek airfields. Residents reported air-defense activity near major cities.

The channel said explosions sounded near the Balaklava thermal power plant, a mobile gas-turbine station, and a substation in Sevastopol. Power cut out across parts of occupied Crimea, leaving Sevastopol, Simferopol, and several more cities and districts without electricity.

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After the attack, Krymsky Veter's monitoring group reported two large fires near Sevastopol, citing satellite data. One sat by a road junction near the village of Pervomaiske under Balaklava, where a bridge crosses the railway. The other burned near one of the local beaches. The group also logged an already-extinguished fire in the Inzhyr tract that had been reported the day before.

The same night, Ukraine also struck Russia's naval base at Novorossiysk, the fleet's main Black Sea base since late 2023.

Part of the campaign to isolate Crimea

The overnight strikes fit Ukraine's months-long effort to cut occupied Crimea off from the forces and supplies that sustain it. Ukrainian drones have severed road and rail links to the peninsula, left it rationing fuel under rolling blackouts, and pushed the campaign onto the sea by hunting the tankers that supply it. 

Human Rights Watch is asking the US Congress to block Türkiye from transferring tens of thousands of decades-old cluster munitions to Ukraine. The State Department had earlier told Congress it is prepared to authorize the deal, which Ukraine wants to strengthen its firepower against the Russian invasion. 

What Türkiye wants to send

Türkiye has requested US permission to retransfer to Ukraine tens of thousands of cluster munition rockets, missiles, and artillery shells held in its stockpiles for decades. The package covers Türkiye's entire inventory of 12 M270 rocket launchers and three types of cluster munitions: 70 M39 ATACMS ballistic missiles, 2,524 M26 rockets, and 47,000 M509A1 203mm artillery shells, according to the State Department transmittal sheets.

The deal is valued at $256 million. Together, the rounds hold more than 10 million explosive bomblets, Human Rights Watch said, produced in part by Türkiye under US licenses first issued in 1987. The US removed the M509A1 shells from service in 1994, when the howitzers that fired them retired, according to HRW.

Cluster munitions scatter small bomblets across a wide area, and some fail to explode on impact, leaving hazards that can maim civilians long after fighting ends.

Ukraine, for its part, gave Washington written assurances not to fire earlier US-supplied cluster rounds in civilian-populated urban areas, and US officials said Kyiv had kept to its use constraints.

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What Washington says

A senior State Department official notified Congress that it is prepared to authorize the transfer, in documents printed in the Congressional Record on 6 August. Türkiye wants to shed older stock and focus its money on modern systems, the official said. Ukraine wants the munitions to bolster its fire support as it resists the invasion, the official added, noting that Ukraine already fields the same or nearly identical rounds. Congress can review the deal and pass a resolution of disapproval to block it.

Human Rights Watch argues the age and unreliability of the weapons make them a foreseeable hazard to civilians. Human Rights Watch deputy Washington director Nicole Widdersheim said the more-than-30-year-old munitions are inaccurate and prone to failure, and that their impact on civilians drove 112 countries to ban the weapon under the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

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The same group has documented Russia's cluster attacks since 2022

Human Rights Watch opposes the weapon for all sides and has tracked Russia's use of it throughout the war. It documented repeated Russian cluster strikes since 2022, called a Russian attack on Lyman a possible war crime, and logged further strikes on civilians in its World Report chapters on Ukraine.

In each case, the group called on Russia to stop firing the weapon. On the Türkiye deal, it is asking Congress for something more concrete — to kill the transfer before the munitions reach Ukraine.

On 12 August 2026, Ukraine targeted Russia's main Black Sea naval base and oil terminal at Novorossiysk overnight. Fires broke out at the port's oil and fleet facilities, two of Russia's largest grain terminals stopped work, and debris damaged homes across the city, according to Ukrainian monitoring channels and local Russian authorities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the operation hours later.

Kyiv calls it a "unique operation" on the fleet's last big base

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the Novorossiysk naval base overnight on 12 August. The port city is situated more than 350 kilometers from the front line on Russia's eastern Black Sea coast. The Ukrainian president described the assault as a unique operation against the last main outpost of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

"Our Palianytsia jet drones, Neptune missiles, and naval uncrewed systems precisely struck the designated targets," he said, adding that hits were confirmed on air-defense positions, piers, and seaport infrastructure.

Fires at the Sheskharis oil terminal and the naval harbor

Ukrainian drones hit the oil terminal and the naval base, the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. Its analysis of NASA satellite fire data placed blazes at the Sheskharis complex, where crude loads onto tankers, and near the naval base and fuel-storage tanks.

Sheskharis is the endpoint of Transneft's main pipelines and a key export point for Russian crude on the Black Sea. Novorossiysk ships 600,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil a day.

The Ukrainian monitoring channel Krymsky Veter said fires broke out near the Sheskharis pier and the military harbor where Black Sea Fleet ships and submarines dock. Russia moved vessels to Novorossiysk after Ukrainian strikes pushed the fleet out of occupied Crimea.

Two grain terminals stop at the world's top wheat exporter

Novorossiysk's two largest grain-handling terminals halted work after the strikes, Reuters reported, citing four industry sources. The world's top wheat seller, Russia sends most of its exports out through Black Sea ports.

The Novorossiysk grain terminal, which can move 8.5 million tons a year, halted work as owner Demetra Holding assessed the damage. NKHP, a terminal handling 7.1 million tons a year, also stopped, its main owner OZK said, adding that no one was hurt. The Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ described NKHP, Russia's largest deepwater grain terminal, as one of the sites hit.

The strikes extend Ukraine's effort to deny Russia the grain and oil revenue that funds the war, a mirror of Russia's own summer campaign against Ukraine's ports: as Moscow strikes Odesa's terminals to choke Ukrainian exports, Kyiv works to shut Russia's own.

Russia says its own drone debris damaged homes and killed two

Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev claimed several hundred drones attacked the region overnight and that falling debris struck 21 residential buildings and four enterprises in Novorossiysk. He claimed two people were killed, including an eight-year-old child, and 13 wounded across the krai, with about 90 residents moved to temporary shelters.

Novorossiysk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko claimed debris hit six residential buildings, a commercial building, and a construction site, and that there were casualties.

The Russian news Telegram channel Astra reported that a café burned on Sukhumskoye Shosse, across the road from the entrance to the Novorossiysk naval base. Astra also found that a strike damaged School No. 15 near the fleet's ship berths.

Part of a widening summer campaign

The strike fits a broader Ukrainian effort this summer to carry the war onto Russian soil and drain the Kremlin's ability to fight. A day earlier, Ukrainian drones set a Wildberries logistics complex ablaze near Voronezh and hit an oil refinery in Orsk. Overnight on 10 August, drones struck a petrochemical plant in Tobolsk and a refinery in Tatarstan.

Russia's war drifted into Romania's Black Sea waters again, and this time the country's military blew the intruders up, acting Defense Minister Radu Miruță said. A vessel near an offshore gas field spotted two floating Russian drones, and army bomb-disposal divers destroyed them. Ukraine confirmed the aircraft were not its own.

A ship raised the alarm

Miruță announced the operation on Facebook, sharing a video. Crews working near the gas platform first noticed the drones in the water. Miruță identified both as Gerberas. A coast guard vessel carrying Romanian army sappers then sailed to the scene. The divers found two uncrewed aircraft adrift, along with several other fragments.

The drones lay in Romania's exclusive economic zone, roughly 90 nautical miles (about 167 km) east of Constanța, Militarnyi reported. Miruță said Romania's Defense Ministry then contacted Kyiv: 

"The Ministry of National Defense contacted the Ukrainian partners, who confirmed the systems do not belong to them."

To protect the shipping route and the work around the platform, the military destroyed the drones in a controlled blast, Suspilne relayed.

Russia designed the Gerbera as a decoy. The cheap foam aircraft forces Ukrainian air defenses to waste time and interceptors, and helps Russian crews locate those defenses. Later, Russia fitted some Gerberas with warheads, turning the decoy into a strike drone. The same model can also carry smaller attack drones or gather intelligence.

The attack on Ukraine

Ukraine's Air Force reported that last night Russia hit Ukraine with an Iskander-M ballistic missile, a Kh-31P anti-radar missile, and Kh-35 guided missiles, plus 138 Shahed-type strike drones — among them jet-powered ones, Gerberas, and Parodiya decoys — fired from several sites inside Russia and from occupied territory. 

The main targets were Sumy Oblast in the northeast and Odesa Oblast, Ukraine's Black Sea coastal region that lies northeast of Romania's shore. By morning, air defenses had downed or suppressed 112 of the drones, though strikes hit 16 locations.

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Adrift far from any front

The drones surfaced far from any battlefield. Russian uncrewed aircraft have repeatedly drifted into neighboring states during Moscow's attacks on Ukraine. Romania itself has shifted from escorting stray drones to shooting them down.

Neptun Deep is Romania's largest offshore gas project, due to start production in 2027. Bucharest is counting on the field to cut its reliance on outside supply and to feed neighbors that still lean on Russia. The two drones drifted into the waters around it.