Ukraine hits Moscow region with drones, wounding 10

MOSCOW

Local residents walk past the smoke of a fire at the Russian e-commerce firm Wildberries' logistics complexes in the town of Elektrostal outside Moscow on July 18, 2026.(AFP)

Ukraine launched scores of drones at the Moscow region on July 20, sparking fires and wounding at least 10 people, Russia said.

The strikes came after Russia hit Kiev with ballistic missiles on July 19 and after Ukrainian strikes on e-commerce warehouses outside Moscow killed eight people on July 18.

Kiev has for months intensified its retaliatory strikes on Russia, causing fuel shortages and disrupting ordinary life more than ever during Moscow’s more than four-year offensive in Ukraine.

Russia said it downed almost 400 drones in the region around the capital, now a regular target of Ukraine’s attacks.

Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said 10 people, including a child, were wounded.

Three of the wounded were Chinese citizens, he said.

He said “several private homes” were damaged in Podolsk, south of Moscow.

He said the towns of Domodedovo, which hosts an international airport, and Odintsovo were also hit.

One person was wounded after a drone fell near their car on a motorway, Vorobyov said.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 85 drones were shot down as they approached the Russian capital.

A day earlier, a Russian ballistic missile attack killed one person and wounded 16 in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev said.

Russia has hit Ukraine’s capital with a series of deadly missile strikes this summer, with June seeing the most civilian casualties in Ukraine since 2022.

Kiev says its strikes on Russia, which have hit as far as the Urals and Siberia, are intended to damage Moscow’s war effort as well as force the Kremlin to negotiate.

Talks to end more than four years of war have stalled and Moscow has not backed down from its maximalist demands of seizing the whole of eastern Ukraine.