Russian forces extended their wave of weekend bombardments into Saturday afternoon, May 16, launching a deadly artillery barrage into the heart of Kherson and striking an industrial facility in Kryvyi Rih with a cruise missile.
The midday strikes follow an expansive overnight campaign that saw Ukrainian air defenses struggle against a massive package of nearly 300 combat and decoy drones.
Deadly midday barrage in Kherson
The Kherson Regional Procuracy (Prosecutor’s Office) confirmed that Russian artillery pieces staged on the occupied east bank of the Dnipro River opened fire on the central residential and commercial sectors of the regional capital at approximately 11:45 a.m. local time.
The heavy shelling caught civilians completely exposed in the open. One unidentified man was killed instantly by shrapnel. Two other passersby – a man and a woman – sustained shrapnel injuries of varying severity and were evacuated by medics to a local hospital.
In response to the attack, the SBU and National Police launched a formal pre-trial criminal investigation under Part 2, Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, documenting the strike as a violation of the laws and customs of war combined with premeditated murder.
This fatal artillery strike followed an earlier morning incident in Kherson’s Central district, where a Russian FPV drone directly targeted a commuter minibus, leaving its 60-year-old driver hospitalized with a severe concussion and blast injuries.
Industrial missile strike in Kryvyi Rih
Concurrently, air raid sirens blanketed the Dnipropetrovsk region as Russian tactical aviation launched a missile toward the industrial hub of Kryvyi Rih.
Oleksandr Vilkul, h of the Kryvyi Rih Defense Council, confirmed a direct hit on a prominent industrial infrastructure asset. “There is destruction,” Vilkul wrote on Telegram, noting that emergency rescue crews and fire brigades had been deployed to suppress potential secondary fires and clear heavy structural debris. Preliminary assessments indicate that no civilian workers or engineers were harmed during the strike.
The missile strike compounds a highly volatile 24 hours for the Dnipropetrovsk region. Overnight, Russian forces struck the Nikopol, Kryvyi Rih, and Synelnykove districts over 20 times using a combination of tube artillery and kamikaze UAVs, burning out dozens of civilian vehicles and wounding a 22-year-old resident.
The latest cross-border actions underscore a highly calculated Kremlin strategy aimed at crippling Ukraine’s remaining domestic manufacturing assets while maintaining a high psychological toll on urban populations.
Across the country, operations continue to clear the wreckage from overnight strikes that damaged shipping hubs in Odesa, shattered subway lines in central Kharkiv, and hit municipal utility structures in the outer Kyiv region.
Ukrainian defense officials reiterate that the high frequency of these combined missile and drone packages is supported by Russia’s active procurement of dual-use Western microchips, emphasizing the need for stricter international supply chain blockades to diminish the Kremlin’s factory output.