At least one person was killed in a massive Ukrainian drone assault on Moscow, a local official said, as Russian forces fired ballistic missiles into Kyiv overnight.
At least one person was killed and three others wounded in a massive Ukrainian drone assault on Moscow, a local official said, as Russian forces fired ballistic missiles into Kyiv overnight.
Russia’s Defence Ministry reported that air defences destroyed 822 drones across the country during the night. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on social media early Sunday that the capital had been attacked with 600 drones, adding that “201 drones were destroyed in Moscow region”.
The governor of the Moscow oblast, Andrei Vorobyov, said on Telegram that an 83-year-old man died after a drone hit a private home. Meanwhile, authorities in the southern Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, reported at least five people killed in attacks.
The drone barrage came after Ukrainian authorities said late Saturday that at least one person had been killed and seven wounded in Russian air attacks. In Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a woman was killed and six people injured in a missile and drone strike, according to the regional governor.
Officials in Kyiv said the capital was “under ballistic missile attack” late Saturday, with at least one person wounded and fires ignited at nonresidential sites in the Obolonskyi and Holosiivskyi districts.
Pavel Felgenhauer, a defence and foreign policy analyst, told Al Jazeera that the simultaneous targeting of capital cities signals an escalation in the conflict. He noted that Ukrainian forces managed to penetrate the Moscow region’s air defences, which he called “the best and most dense antiair defences in the entirety of Russia”. The strikes did not hit central Moscow, he said, but reached the city’s outskirts.
In Romania, the Ministry of National Defence reported that a Spanish F-18 jet on a NATO air policing mission had shot down a drone that entered the country’s airspace. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for NATO’s military headquarters, said the alliance is ready to defend itself. “Additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remain under investigation, but the drone appears to be Russian,” he stated.
The downing was the fourth of a drone over Romania this year. The Defence Ministry wrote on social media that the drone had arrived from neighbouring Moldova. Its statement said: “The surveillance systems of the Ministry of National Defense detected the intrusion of an aerial target into national airspace, coming from the Republic of Moldova.”
Romanian Defence Minister Radu Miruta congratulated the personnel involved, calling it “a successful mission.”
Earlier this year, a Romanian jet shot down a suspected Russian drone in July, and in May a stray drone struck a building in the city of Galati, injuring two people. Romania, which shares a 634 km (394 mile) border with Ukraine, has repeatedly seen Russian drones breach its airspace as Moscow intensifies its bombing campaign against Ukrainian civilian and military infrastructure.
Russia has maintained near daily missile and drone strikes on Ukraine since launching its full scale invasion in early 2022, often hitting areas far from the front lines. The war has also disrupted shipping in the Black Sea, with mines and unmanned sea drones found floating in the water.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission, civilian casualties in Ukraine reached their highest level since 2022 in July, with at least 437 killed and 2,610 injured. Ukraine has increasingly targeted military, industrial and logistical facilities inside Russia, saying its strikes are a direct response to Moscow’s ongoing bombardment of Ukrainian towns and infrastructure.
The overnight attacks on Moscow and Kyiv, together with NATO’s interception of a drone over Romania, underscored how the conflict continues to reach far beyond the front lines.
