Eight people were killed and more than 60 wounded in overnight Ukrainian drone attacks across several Russian regions, officials said on Saturday, as Kyiv intensified its long-range campaign against energy, logistics and military targets far beyond the border.
The strikes hit warehouses, an oil depot, residential and public buildings in areas including Tambov, Moscow and Vladimir, while Ukraine said it had also attacked vessels, military infrastructure and targets in Russian-occupied territory.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences intercepted 379 drones over 19 regions, annexed Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.
Two large warehouses belonging to Wildberries, one of Russia’s biggest online retailers, were struck overnight, according to Russian officials.
One facility was in Kotovsk, in the Tambov region, about 360 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. The other was in Elektrostal, around 50 kilometres east of Moscow.
Both warehouses caught fire. Wildberries founder Tatyana Kim said later on Saturday morning that the blaze at the Kotovsk site had been extinguished.
Images and video published by Russian online media showed flames engulfing the Elektrostal warehouse, with thick columns of smoke rising above the site.
Seven night-shift workers were killed at the Kotovsk warehouse and another 25 were wounded, Tambov regional governor Yevgeny Pervyshov said.
In the Moscow region, 37 people were injured, Governor Andrei Vorobyov said. One of them later died in hospital, bringing the overall death toll from the overnight attacks to eight. Vorobyov said a Ukrainian drone also struck an oil depot in Noginsk, just north of Elektrostal, causing a fire.
The attack prompted authorities to evacuate a nearby maternity hospital and a residential building, he added.
Drone debris also struck a kindergarten in Elektrostal and started a fire, which was later extinguished, according to the governor.
Further east, in Vladimir, about 180 kilometres from Moscow, a drone hit a residential building and caused a brief fire, regional governor Alexander Avdeyev said. No casualties were reported there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country’s long-range forces had struck two “significant logistical facilities in the Moscow and Tambov regions”.
“These facilities were used by the aggressor to supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment,” he wrote on Telegram.
Zelenskyy also said an oil facility had been hit and that Ukrainian special operations forces had carried out strikes against targets in the Sea of Azov and in Russian-occupied territory.
Ukraine’s General Staff separately confirmed an attack on the fuel depot in Noginsk, saying it supplied fuel, including to the Russian armed forces.
It also reported strikes on two tankers, two floating cranes and a tugboat in the Black and Azov seas. The military said the vessels had been used to transport oil, fuel and military cargo.
The General Staff said Ukrainian forces had also struck a Project 10410 Svetlyak-class patrol vessel in Kerch. It described the ship as the second vessel of that class to be hit in two days.
Another strike targeted a railway bridge across the Bila River near Sabivka in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, the military said, claiming the route was used by Moscow for military logistics.
Kyiv has repeatedly targeted Russian oil facilities, arms production sites, warehouses and transport infrastructure in an effort to weaken Moscow’s ability to sustain its invasion.
Ukraine says the attacks are also intended to bring the consequences of the war home to Russians as the conflict moves well into its fifth year.
Russia’s defence ministry said air defences had intercepted 379 Ukrainian drones overnight across 19 Russian regions, as well as over Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, and the Sea of Azov and Black Sea.
