June was the deadliest month for civilians in Ukraine since the first weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion, the United Nations has said, in a report that points to a sustained rise in casualties driven by long-range strikes.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded at least 293 civilians killed and 1,990 injured in June, the highest combined total since April 2022. An earlier, preliminary figure cited at a Security Council briefing put the number of deaths at 265; the monitoring mission's fuller monthly count is higher.
A rising trend
The June toll continued a sharp upward trend. Total civilian casualties were about 10 percent higher than in May, when the UN recorded 282 killed and 1,794 injured, and 37 percent higher than in June 2025, which saw 249 killed and 1,416 injured. Over the first half of 2026, the mission documented well over a thousand civilian deaths.
Long-range weapons, which the UN describes as powerful missiles with wide-area effects together with drones, remained the leading cause of harm, accounting for 45 percent of casualties, or 126 killed and 907 injured. Casualties from short-range drones near the front line reached their highest monthly level since the invasion began, at 89 killed and 588 injured.
Where the strikes fell
The heaviest tolls were recorded in the regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Dnipro and Kyiv, according to the mission. Most of the documented casualties occurred in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.
Competing accounts
Ukraine attributes the deaths to systematic Russian strikes on populated areas and civilian infrastructure. Russia has generally denied targeting civilians and has said Ukrainian military positions are at times located near residential areas. Moscow has also reported civilian casualties inside Russia from Ukrainian strikes; in a briefing to the UN Security Council, UN officials said they were not in a position to independently verify those Russian figures.
UN officials used the findings to renew calls for a ceasefire and for all sides to comply with international humanitarian law, warning that the war has reached its deadliest point for civilians in years. The figures, drawn from the monitoring mission's verified casualty count, are widely regarded as conservative, as the UN corroborates each case and cautions that the true toll is likely higher.
