Ukraine Fires Nearly 800 Drones at Russia in One of War's Largest Single Attacks, Six Killed

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone attacks of the war overnight, sending nearly 800 drones into Russian territory with more than 600 aimed at Moscow and the surrounding region, according to Russia's Ministry of Defense and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

Russia's defense ministry says it intercepted 822 drones overall. Sobyanin said roughly a third of the drones headed for Moscow, about 180, were shot down over the region. State news agency TASS called it the largest Ukrainian drone attack on the capital since the start of the year, according to reporting cited by CNN.

At least six people were killed. An 83-year-old man died when a drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said. Five more people were killed in Russia's southwestern Rostov region, where more than 150 drones struck three towns, damaging homes and a railway station and sparking a forest fire, according to regional governor Yury Slyusar. Three people, including a 10-year-old girl, were injured in the Moscow region itself.

Ukraine's military said one target in Rostov was a factory producing solid rocket propellant for Russian weapons.

The attack knocked out power to roughly 5,000 homes and businesses, according to regional energy provider Mosoblenergo, and forced the closure of all four Moscow airports, according to flight tracking cited by ZeroHedge.

The Wildberries Campaign

A recurring target: warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer and rough equivalent to Amazon. A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a major fire at a Wildberries facility in Podolsk, in the Moscow region, with video geolocated by CNN confirming the blaze.

Wildberries said the damage was "insignificant." Ukraine's Ministry of Defense disputes that characterization, claiming on social media that it has now knocked out seven of Wildberries' ten largest logistics hubs, and TIME reports Ukraine has hit roughly 20 Wildberries warehouses since July 18. The company has responded by announcing plans to build new warehousing in neighboring Kazakhstan, according to CNN.

Kyiv alleges Wildberries' logistics network supports Russian military supply chains. Both Wildberries and the Russian government deny any military affiliation. No independent verification of either claim appears in available reporting. If Ukraine is wrong, it's bombing civilian commercial infrastructure and burning, per NPR, billions of dollars worth of ordinary consumer merchandise. If Kyiv is right, it's degrading a military supply line hiding behind a shopping app. Nothing in the current record settles which is true.

An Escalating Pattern, Not a One-Off

This wasn't an isolated event. The Associated Press noted the strike came just two days after Ukraine launched a similar-sized drone salvo, and puts this attack as the second-largest since January 2025. Russia, meanwhile, continues its own bombardment: a Russian missile strike on a village in Ukraine's Kharkiv region killed at least 10 people and wounded eight more, officials said, and a separate strike on the Kyiv book market and other sites wounded six people, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A Russian strike also hit the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy's hometown, killing two and injuring 13 employees, according to a company statement posted on Telegram.

Neither side is making meaningful ground on the roughly 780-mile front line, according to analysts cited by the Associated Press, with drones and ground robots increasingly substituting for traditional maneuver warfare.

State Media's Selective Silence

Breitbart's reprint of AP wire coverage notes something worth considering. Russia's two dominant state channels, Russia 1 and Channel One, didn't mention the Moscow drone attack at all in their morning broadcasts. State news agency RIA Novosti did cover it, describing it as one of the largest attacks of the war. That split, between total blackout on TV and acknowledgment in print wire copy, reflects how the Kremlin manages what its own public sees of a war being fought increasingly on Russian soil.

What's Unresolved

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Vladimir Putin is "dragging out the war instead of accepting Ukraine's realistic ceasefire proposals." Putin has given no public indication he intends to stop the invasion, now in its fifth year. Zelenskyy has separately said Ukraine faces a "critical shortage" of Patriot air defense missiles from the U.S., the interceptors that have been central to protecting Kyiv from Russian strikes. Whether Washington moves to backfill that shortage, and whether either side's long-range strike campaign forces the other toward the negotiating table Sybiha is calling for, remain open questions with no resolution in current reporting.