The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has entered a new phase of escalation, as reciprocal long-range drone strikes carried out overnight Tuesday have left at least nine people dead and dozens more injured across both countries. The exchange of attacks underscores the expanding reach of Ukrainian drone capabilities, which now allow Kyiv to strike targets deep within Russian territory, far from the front lines of the ground war.
Andrei Vorobyov, governor of Russia’s Moscow region, confirmed that a Ukrainian drone attack targeted an industrial site in Novoselki, a town located roughly 43 miles south of the Kremlin. The strike ignited a large blaze at a local warehouse, killing five people and wounding 10 more. Of those injured, seven were listed in moderate condition and one remained in serious condition as of Wednesday morning.
While Vorobyov did not publicly confirm the exact ownership of the targeted facility, both Ukrainian media reports and regional sources have linked the site to Wildberries, Russia’s largest e-commerce platform often nicknamed the “Russian Amazon” for its dominant market position. This attack follows a string of recent strikes on Wildberries infrastructure across Russia carried out by Ukrainian forces over the past several weeks.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly stated that Wildberries depots are being repurposed to store and distribute supplies for the Russian military, a claim the Russian government and the company itself have consistently denied. Overnight, additional Wildberries warehouses in the St. Petersburg and Tver regions were also confirmed as targets of Ukrainian drone attacks. The company has not issued any formal statement on the Moscow region strike, but did confirm that its St. Petersburg facility sustained damage in the attack.
Alongside its advances in drone development that allow deep strikes into Russian territory, this wave of attacks has prompted an immediate and deadly retaliation from Russian forces. Russia launched its own coordinated series of drone and missile strikes across multiple Ukrainian cities overnight, leaving four civilians dead and multiple others injured.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service detailed the human cost of the Russian retaliation: an 89-year-old woman was killed and seven people, including two young girls aged 2 and 12, were injured in a strike on the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv. In the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, a strike on a residential neighborhood killed three people—a woman and two girls aged 5 and 10—and wounded four more. Strikes on Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi left two people injured, while a food warehouse in the central city of Dnipro was set ablaze by attacking projectiles.
In the immediate aftermath of the wave of attacks, Russia’s Ministry of Defence announced that its air defense forces had intercepted and destroyed 320 Ukrainian drones launched during the overnight operation. The latest exchange of deep strikes comes as Ukraine continues to expand its domestic drone production program, building capabilities to strike military and logistical targets far behind Russian front lines, increasingly bringing the conflict to Russian population centers close to the seat of power in Moscow.