Ukraine launched hundreds of drones at targets across Russia early Sunday in one of Kyiv's largest aerial attacks of the war, and hours later a NATO fighter downed a drone over Romania near the Ukrainian border.
The overnight assault killed at least six people inside Russia, sparked a fire at a warehouse belonging to online retailer Wildberries outside Moscow and drew a Spanish F-18 into combat over allied airspace — a widening geography for a war Kyiv is increasingly carrying to Russian cities and infrastructure.
What Kyiv struck
Russia's Ministry of Defense said it destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said some 600 drones were detected heading toward the capital, with roughly a third destroyed over the Moscow region. Governor Andrey Vorobyov said an 83-year-old man was killed when a drone hit a private home there, and confirmed that a strike had ignited the Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk.
In Rostov, on Russia's southwestern border with Ukraine, more than 150 drones killed five people, damaged homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire, Governor Yury Slyusar said. Ukraine has stepped up long-range strikes this year on Russian military industry and energy sites, CBS News reported, and has repeatedly targeted Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars in merchandise.
Casualties in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Russian missile and drone attack on his hometown of Kryvyi Rih killed two people and wounded 14, and that one more person died in Sumy. A man and a woman were killed in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region, said Ivan Fedorov, head of the local military administration. Fires burned across Kyiv, wounding six.
"Wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure," Zelenskyy said.
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission recorded 437 Ukrainian civilians killed and 2,610 wounded in July, the highest monthly toll since 2022.
The Romanian shootdown
Romania's Ministry of National Defense said a Spanish F-18 on NATO air-policing duty intercepted a drone that entered national airspace from Moldova early Sunday. Debris fell in an unpopulated area near the Ukrainian border. NATO spokesperson Marty O'Donnell said the drone "appeared to be Russian" and called it the fourth successful drone shootdown by NATO aircraft over Romanian airspace. Defense Minister Radu Miruta praised the crew for "a successful mission."
Romania shares a 394-mile border with Ukraine and has repeatedly recovered drone fragments since 2023. Latvia's military reported a similar shootdown in June.
The escalation calculus
Pavel Felgenhauer, a defense and foreign policy analyst, told Al Jazeera that Ukraine had bypassed air defenses in a region with the "best and most dense antiair defences in the entirety of Russia," though the drones reached only the capital's outskirts, not central Moscow. Russia's Defense Ministry said its own overnight strikes on Ukraine targeted a metallurgical plant in Kryvyi Rih and Kyiv sites including a manufacturing facility for Ukraine's Flamingo missile.
Sunday's reporting drew on Ukrainian officials, Russian regional governors and Western wire services. The Kremlin had offered no broader political framing of the strikes beyond the Defense Ministry's overnight tally by press time, and independent verification of casualty figures on either side was not immediately available.
Both governments have kept up near-daily strikes since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, and Ukrainian officials have said they will continue targeting military, industrial and logistical sites inside Russia.