World News
Moscow targeted in what Russia calls the largest Ukrainian drone attack of the year
By Staff Writer | 17 August 2026
Russian officials say at least seven people were killed as hundreds of drones flew at the capital and the regions around it. Russian strikes killed at least seven people across Ukraine over the same period, and a NATO jet shot down a drone over Romania.
Russia says it faced the largest-scale Ukrainian air attack of the year overnight into Sunday. Its defence ministry said it destroyed 822 drones across the country, and the governor of the Moscow region said 600 of them were aimed at the capital and its surroundings. At least seven people were killed in Russia, according to the regional officials who reported them.
Five people died in the southern region of Rostov, its governor said. Officials in Belgorod, on the Ukrainian border, said a woman was killed when a civilian bus was struck, and Governor Andrey Vorobyov said an 83-year-old man died in a drone attack in the Moscow region. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said a warehouse at Koledino, 25 kilometres from the centre of the capital, was hit, injuring three people.
The warehouse belongs to the online retailer Wildberries, whose distribution network has been struck repeatedly since July. Ukraine's defence ministry said the attack meant seven of the retailer's ten largest logistics centres had been disabled; Kyiv has described the sites as part of the supply chain for equipment bought by the Russian army.
The week's bombardment of Ukraine
Russian attacks killed at least seven people across Ukraine over the same period, officials there said. Two died when a guided aerial bomb struck a house in the Zaporizhzhia region, two in Kryvyi Rih, and one each in the Sumy, Donetsk and Kherson regions. In Kyiv, air raid sirens sounded four times overnight, and Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least six people were injured, including a child. A book market in the city's Pochayna district was damaged.
Russia said its strikes on Kyiv targeted a facility producing parts for Ukraine's Flamingo missiles and a factory making drone components. Each side says the other strikes civilians.
Wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
President Zelensky said 13 regions had come under attack this week, with Russia launching more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs and 62 missiles. Those figures are the Ukrainian government's own.
A drone downed over Romania
Romania's Ministry of National Defence said a Spanish F-18 flying a NATO air policing mission shot down a drone that entered Romanian airspace from the direction of Moldova on Sunday, the fourth downed over the country this year. "Additional details regarding Sunday's incident remain under investigation, but the drone appears to be Russian," said Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for NATO's military headquarters.
With movement on the ground measured in single villages, the exchange of drones and missiles is now the war's main front. This weekend it ran from the Moscow suburbs to NATO airspace.