Russia says it shot down more than 800 Ukrainian drones overnight in what appears to be among Ukraine’s largest aerial attacks on Russia, with authorities reporting at least six people killed.
Ukraine has increasingly fired barrages of drones at targets deep inside Russia, including warehouses and industrial plants as well as refineries.
Russia’s state-run TASS News said it was the largest Ukrainian drone attack since the beginning of the year – with many of the drones targeting the Moscow area where many of Russia’s elite reside.
Air defense forces and electronic warfare units shot down and neutralized 187 drones over the Moscow region, according to its governor, Andrey Vorobiev.
Geolocated video showed a huge fire at a Wildberries warehouse in the Moscow region, the Russian equivalent of Amazon. Vorobiev said no one was injured.
Wildberries’ warehouses have been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drones in recent months. The company recently announced that it would build new warehousing in neighboring Kazakhstan.
One person, an 83-year-old man, was killed by a drone attack elsewhere in the region on Sunday, according to Vorobiev.
Drones were intercepted over 17 regions – mainly in southern and western Russia – according to the Russian Defense ministry.
Five people were killed in Rostov in southern Russia, according to the governor of that region.
Russia meanwhile continues to target the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with a mix of missiles and drones.
Six people were wounded by strikes early Sunday, according to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Kremenchuk and Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine were also hit with ballistic missiles, Zelensky said. Two people were killed in Kryvyi Rih and another in Sumy in the north, Zelensky said.
Ukraine did not shoot down any of the ballistic missiles fired at it overnight, according to an Air Force statement, again highlighting its short supply of missiles interceptors.
Russia fired more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs and 62 missiles at Ukraine over the last week, according to Zelensky.
“European interceptors cannot simply be allowed to sit in storage. Lives need to be protected. Russia must be stopped,” he added.
Elsewhere, an unidentified drone was shot down Sunday in Romanian airspace, according to the Defense ministry in Bucharest. The drone was intercepted by a Spanish F-18 fighter jet pilot on a NATO air policing mission.
It was the fourth drone shot down this year over Romania, the defense ministry said.
The ministry said its radars detected the drone entering the country from neighboring Moldova. Fragments appeared to have fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.
In July, Romanian F-16 fighter jet pilots shot down three Russian drones breaching national airspace for the first time after dozens of such incursions in the more than four years of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
This story has been updated.
