Ukraine has conducted one of its largest drone attack waves since the start of the war, resulting in a massive fire at a Wildberries distribution warehouse near Moscow and the deaths of at least six people. Russian authorities confirmed the overnight incident, which saw a 250,000-square-meter facility located 25 miles south of the city center in Podolsk engulfed in flames. Ukraine’s military stated the facility was disabled during the operation.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that 600 drones targeted the region overnight, with 201 destroyed by air defenses. While one person was reported killed in the Moscow region, Ukraine noted that a second warehouse near Domodedovo was also targeted. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that the figure was the largest daily total claimed by the defence ministry, exceeding a record that had been set only the day before, though the figure is probably exaggerated and could not be verified. These figures underscore the rapid expansion of Ukraine's long-range strike capabilities throughout 2026.
Serhii Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, suggested that while Moscow often exaggerates defense effectiveness, the increased deployment of homegrown technology—such as the Flamingo cruise missile and Fire Point’s FP-1 long-range fixed-wing drones—has allowed Ukraine to strike targets up to 1,500 miles from its border. Kyiv has recently focused on logistics hubs linked to the online retailer Wildberries, arguing these sites support military operations alongside commercial stock. Ukraine claims to have disabled seven of the company’s ten largest warehouses recently.
The conflict saw heavy casualties elsewhere, with five people killed in Russia’s southern Rostov region, where Ukraine reportedly targeted a rocket fuel factory in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. Meanwhile, Russian strikes on Ukraine resulted in two deaths in Kryvyi Rih, two in the Sumy border region, and three others across the nation. A ballistic missile attack on Kyiv shortly before 3 a.m. injured six and destroyed a significant portion of the Petrovka book market in the Obolonskyi district. "There is nothing. Nobody has anything left," said Natalya, a bookstore owner who was interviewed by Ukraine’s Hromadske website. "Everything burned down. I was selling foreign language textbooks for schoolchildren. We were waiting for September so that everyone would have textbooks … But what happened happened."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the strikes, noting that Russia had launched over 1,550 drones, 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles in the past week. He emphasized that Russian forces continue to target civilian infrastructure. Amid the chaos, a NATO patrol mission involving a Spanish F-18 jet shot down a suspected Russian drone after it entered Romanian airspace at approximately 5 a.m.
As both nations' air defenses face exhaustion, the war of attrition has intensified. Though Ukraine is effective at stopping slower-moving drones, it has little to no defence against high-speed ballistics, its stock of US-made Patriot interceptor missiles – the only weapons capable of knocking them out – having been run down. Kuzan noted that every successful strike diminishes Russia's military and economic capacity, forcing the Kremlin to grapple with the rising scale of the conflict as winter approaches.
The defence ministry in Moscow said it had shot down 1,478 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours – the highest ever total claimed – in an escalating air war in which seven Ukrainians were also killed as Russia bombed 13 locations inside the country.
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday it had disabled seven out of 10 of the company’s largest warehouses in an effort to hurt the Russian economy and affect ordinary citizens financially, in a strike conducted with FP-1 drones.
