Temporary Kherson Ceasefire Ends as Ukraine and Russia Resume Strikes

A temporary, localized ceasefire in Ukraine's Kherson region ended, and both sides resumed or continued strikes. Ukrainian officials said hundreds of thousands of households lost electricity after Russian attacks, including roughly 200,000 in the Dnipro region and more than 80,000 near Kyiv. Russian authorities reported a large drone attack on an industrial site in the Nizhny Novgorod region; monitoring channels claimed the Kstovo oil refinery was among the targets, though local officials did not confirm the specific facility.

Residents of Kherson used the pause to evacuate or prepare. Once the window closed, local officials and residents described a return to expected shelling and drone activity. The pause had been one of the longer localized arrangements of the war. Its end returns the southern city and surrounding areas to the pattern of daily attacks that has defined the front for months.

Ukraine has continued strikes on Russian energy infrastructure despite external pressure to limit such attacks. Russian regional governors reported intercepting large numbers of drones and damage at industrial sites. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy linked the power losses to Russian strikes on the grid. The dual pattern—Ukrainian drones reaching deep into Russian territory and Russian missiles and drones hitting Ukrainian cities—continued without a broader ceasefire framework.

The Kherson pause was narrow in geography and time. It did not extend to other sectors of the front. Its expiry therefore changes conditions for one city and its immediate hinterland more than for the war as a whole. Still, the ability of the sides to arrange even a short, local halt shows that limited de-confliction remains possible when both calculate a short-term interest in it. The rapid return to strikes once the clock ran out indicates that neither side currently sees a durable local arrangement as more valuable than continued pressure.

Power restoration in the affected Ukrainian regions will depend on the pace of repairs and the frequency of further strikes. On the Russian side, any confirmed damage to refining capacity adds to the cumulative effect of repeated Ukrainian drone campaigns against energy targets. Both sets of facts sit inside a larger pattern in which neither capital has agreed to a comprehensive pause, and both continue to treat energy infrastructure as a legitimate military objective.