MOSCOW — One person was killed and 61 more were injured after Ukrainian drones struck two cities in Moscow Region overnight Saturday, hitting logistics warehouses that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as critical nodes in Russia’s sanctioned supply chain for drone components. Al Jazeera’s Moscow correspondent characterized the toll as the highest from a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory in three years.
The primary target was a Wildberries logistics warehouse in Elektrostal, an industrial city roughly 50 kilometres east of central Moscow. A second strike set an oil depot ablaze in Noginsk. Zelenskyy said the warehouses were “significant logistics facilities” used to supply “sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment.” The statement is rare: Kyiv does not routinely confirm individual operations inside Russian territory, making the public acknowledgment a deliberate signal about the nature of the targets.
Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov revised the injury toll upward Saturday afternoon via the MAX messenger application. Fifty-seven people were injured in Elektrostal; four in Noginsk. Of those, 41 required hospitalization. Nine remain in critical condition and 31 in moderate condition. Vorobyov confirmed one person died from their injuries in Elektrostal. The initial figures released by emergency services in the early morning hours had put the total lower, and were adjusted as hospitals completed intake across both cities.
Most patients sustained shrapnel and blast wounds, head trauma, and bone fractures. Others suffered burns or smoke inhalation, injuries consistent with a warehouse fire rather than a direct munitions strike on open ground. The presence of a Wildberries facility, one of Russia’s largest e-commerce and logistics operators, as the specific target adds a dimension absent from strikes on military depots closer to the front: civilian workers were present during a night shift.
Moscow’s mayor said more than 370 drones had targeted the Moscow Region overnight, a figure that would make Saturday’s operation one of the largest single-night drone campaigns Ukraine has mounted against the Russian capital’s surrounding area. Simultaneous strikes hit a separate Wildberries warehouse in the Tambov Region, Al Jazeera reported, killing seven workers there; combined, Saturday’s attacks killed at least eight people and wounded dozens across multiple Russian regions.
The Elektrostal strike is a distinct category from the agricultural or logistics-hub towns closer to the Ukrainian border that have been struck more frequently. Elektrostal carries industrial significance, with a long history in nuclear engineering and metallurgy, and sits well inside the ring of cities that constitutes the densely populated Moscow Oblast. Attacks at this distance from the capital carry heightened political visibility inside Russia.
Russia retaliated with what Governor Oleh Kipper of Odesa described as a “massive” assault on the port’s infrastructure, killing one person and wounding three, and claiming the destruction of a Neptune launcher in Mykolaiv. The exchange marks one of the broadest single-day escalations in long-range strikes since the conflict entered its fifth year.
The air defense response to the 370-drone operation and the precise extent of structural damage to the Elektrostal warehouse were not included in Vorobyov’s statement. Whether Wildberries’ Elektrostal facility actually handled the sanctioned components Zelenskyy described has not been independently verified. The company operates dozens of fulfilment centres across Russia, and the Ukrainian military’s targeting rationale is based on intelligence assessments that have not been made public.
What is established is that the revised toll, one dead, nine critically injured, and 41 hospitalised from a single overnight operation on a city this close to Moscow, marks a threshold that prior strikes in the region had not reached. Whether it produces a political response inside Russia beyond the statement Vorobyov posted to a messaging application is not yet clear.
