Overnight drone and missile strikes killed 19 people across Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, as both sides dramatically escalated long-range attacks deep behind each other’s front lines, pushing the civilian death toll to levels not seen since the earliest months of the war, according to authorities on both sides of the conflict.
With fighting largely stalled along the front and diplomatic talks frozen, the warring nations have significantly intensified strikes far beyond the immediate battlefield, driving casualties among civilians to their highest point since the conflict’s opening weeks in 2022.
How Large Was The Ukrainian Assault On Moscow?
Ukraine launched one of its largest aerial attacks of the war overnight, sending hundreds of drones towards Russian territory, with the bulk of the assault directed at the Moscow region. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the state-backed MAX platform that 600 drones were detected flying towards the Moscow region between Saturday evening and 6.30 am local time on Sunday, of which 201 were destroyed over the region itself. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said separately that it had destroyed 822 drones across the country overnight.
Russian state news agency TASS described the assault as the largest Ukrainian drone attack on the country since the start of the year, with many of the drones aimed at the Moscow area, home to much of the country’s political and business elite. Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region, wrote on Telegram that an 83-year-old man was killed when a drone struck a private home.
What Happened Elsewhere In Russia?
The deadliest single incident on Russian soil occurred further south. Swarms of Ukrainian drones killed five people in a residential area of the southern Rostov region, according to regional governor Yuri Slusar, while two further deaths were reported in the Belgorod and Moscow regions. Ukraine’s military separately said it had struck a missile fuel production facility in Russia’s Rostov region overnight, according to earlier reporting from France 24, as part of a broader campaign targeting Russian military-industrial infrastructure.
Ukraine has also increasingly targeted logistics tied to Russia’s civilian economy. Kyiv’s forces have repeatedly struck giant warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, burning through billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise and bringing the war home to the Russian public more directly than at almost any point in the conflict’s four and a half years.
How Badly Was Kyiv Hit In Return?
Russia responded with a heavy missile bombardment of Ukraine’s capital. A barrage of Russian drones and missiles killed civilians in Ukraine, with strikes sparking fires across the city. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the missile attack ignited fires in at least two districts of the capital, according to France 24’s earlier coverage of the overnight raid. Russian attacks sparked fires throughout the Ukrainian capital, wounding six people, with a blaze tearing through kiosks at one of the city’s largest book markets near the Pochaina metro station, sending plumes of black smoke across the city as firefighters battled through rubble where the pavilions once stood.
Casualties were not confined to Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kremenchuk and Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine were also struck by ballistic missiles, with two people killed in Kryvyi Rih and another in Sumy in the north. Steel producer ArcelorMittal said thirteen employees at its Kryvyi Rih plant were injured and one person died in the strike, with rescue and search operations continuing at the site. Elsewhere, a man and a woman were killed when their home was struck in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to Ivan Fedorov, head of the local military administration.
Why Is The Air War Intensifying Now?
The surge in long-range strikes comes despite, and in some ways because of, stalled diplomacy. Zelensky, writing on social media, said Russian forces continued to strike civilian infrastructure wherever their ballistic missiles could reach, according to Agence France-Presse’s reporting carried by France 24. He said that over the preceding week alone, Ukrainian cities had been hit by more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs and 62 missiles, and renewed his appeal to allies for additional air defence support.
Zelensky pointed to the wider regional stakes of the bombardment, warning that when North Korean-made ballistic missiles destroy infrastructure and cost lives in Europe, European interceptors cannot simply be left sitting in storage. Russia has intensified its use of hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles in recent months, exploiting gaps in Ukraine’s air defences that widened after the United States and Israel’s war against Iran diverted supplies away from Kyiv.
The escalation follows a summit in Alaska on 15 August between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting that has so far failed to translate into any pause in hostilities, with both sides instead pressing ahead with their heaviest exchange of long-range strikes in months.
Neither Russia’s defence ministry nor Ukraine’s presidential office had issued a further update on casualty figures by Sunday evening, and both sides continued to trade blame over responsibility for civilian deaths from the overnight barrages.
