Ukraine presses drone attacks on Moscow and Russian logistics

Ukraine attacked Moscow with more than 600 drones overnight on Sunday, killing one person and setting ablaze another warehouse belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest ecommerce retailer.

The attack was one of the largest Ukraine has mounted in its campaign of targeting Russian logistics and energy infrastructure this summer, Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

An 83-year-old man died after a drone was shot down and struck a home near Ramenskoe, a Moscow suburb, Vorobyov said. Three people were injured in the town of Podolsk, home to the Wildberries warehouse hit in the attack, and a further three were hurt in other towns in the area, he added. Videos posted on social media showed an enormous cloud of smoke billowing over the town after the attack, stretching high into the air.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had shot down a total of 828 drones across western regions of the country and occupied areas of Ukraine. Five people died in the southern Rostov region on the border with Ukraine, according to the local governor, who said more than 150 drones had been shot down during the attack.

Another person died when a drone hit a bus in Belgorod region, officials said. Russian officials habitually do not acknowledge when Ukraine’s strikes hit their target and blame the damage on debris from drones they have shot down.

Ukrainian defence company Fire Point took credit for the attack on the Wildberries facility, saying its FP-1 long-range strike drones had hit one of the company’s largest logistics hubs. The retailer has found itself a major target for drone strikes after Kyiv accused Wildberries of selling components that could be used in drones and other dual-use equipment with military applications.

The warehouse in Podolsk, one of Wildberries’ main facilities serving the Moscow region, is the seventh of the company’s largest 10 sites to be hit this summer and was the largest still in operation, according to exiled independent Russian news site Agentstvo.

The attacks have destroyed billions of dollars in inventory, raising worries about Wildberries’ financial health and ruining the livelihoods of thousands of sellers who market goods on the platform. Wildberries has offered the most affected sellers some compensation, and Russia’s central bank has instructed lenders to restructure their debt on favourable terms.

The strike followed a Ukrainian cyber attack earlier in the week that was revealed on Saturday by Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence directorate. The agency said that on August 10 and 11, members of the Cyber Corps community had attacked the digital infrastructure of Wildberries, causing “large-scale disruption” to its services, including to its payment system.

Meanwhile in Kyiv on Sunday, the Ukrainian General Staff said its forces also struck a Russian missile unit in occupied Crimea and a railway bridge in the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia region that is key for military logistics and ammunition warehouses in the Donetsk region.

Russian missiles and drones also struck Kyiv and several other cities. Ukraine’s Air Force reported shooting down 85 of 106 attack drones and three cruise missiles. But Kyiv failed to down any of the Russian ballistic missiles launched at industrial facilities in Kyiv and Kryvyi Rih, where two people were killed and 14 injured, according to the air force and local authorities.

The Pochaina metro station and a renowned book market were hit in northern Kyiv, resulting in fires and the destruction of numerous vendor stalls. The market had been an important cultural hub for generations of Ukrainians.

Kyiv’s air-defence crews have been left helpless during recent waves of Russian ballistic missile attacks after running out of Patriot interceptors, which are the only air-defence missiles capable of countering the barrages.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with the Trump administration and European partners to share or sell Ukraine Patriot interceptors from their stocks, but they have hesitated due to a global shortage of the weapons amid the US war with Iran.

Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia this week alone had launched at Ukraine more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles, most of them ballistic missiles of various types.

Russia’s defence ministry said its latest attacks targeted defence production facilities in Kyiv, an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, and the ArcelorMittal metallurgical complex in Kryvyi Rih. Moscow also said it conducted a drone strike on a bulk carrier in the port of Odesa that it claimed was carrying military supplies.