Russia says Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow, St Petersburg

Kyiv’s capacity to strike Russia’s major cities has come under the spotlight since Donald Trump asked if it could do so.

Russian authorities said debris from a downed drone struck an apartment block in Voronezh. Photo: Sergei Sviridov/Zuma Press via WSJ

Russia said more than 100 Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow and various parts of the country on Thursday, less than two weeks after President Trump asked Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, whether Kyiv could strike the Russian capital and St Petersburg, the country’s second-largest city.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defences had downed 122 Ukrainian drones overnight, as both countries lean into aerial assaults amid a slowdown on the battlefield and stalled efforts to achieve peace.

Still, the scale of recent Russian attacks on Ukraine outweighs those launched in the other direction. In one overnight salvo last week, Russia unleashed more than 700 drones and missiles across Ukraine, the largest such assault of the war, now well into its fourth year.

Kyiv didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest drone strikes.

The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, said three drones flying toward the Russian capital were destroyed. Authorities said a district just east of St Petersburg was targeted. The city’s main airport temporarily cancelled flights during the night, but didn’t cite the threat from drones. Russia doesn’t usually give details of the reason for flight disruptions.

In the Voronezh region, near the border with Ukraine, authorities said three children were injured after debris from a downed drone struck a multistorey apartment block. Smolensk, a region west of Moscow, also reported casualties from falling drone debris.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities have also continued throughout the week. On Tuesday, the head of the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk said one person had been killed and five injured in overnight drone attacks.

The Russian strikes have also increasingly targeted the diplomatic and commercial assets of Ukraine’s Western partners, most recently Poland. The consular section of the Polish Embassy in Kyiv was struck in a drone attack on July 4, though no staff were injured.

Earlier this week, Russian drones also hit a commercial factory that manufactures wooden flooring in central Ukraine and is owned by a Polish businessman, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on X, adding that several workers had been injured, including two with severe burns.

Russia and Ukraine’s duelling aerial bombardments come as efforts to achieve a ceasefire between the two sides have stalled. Trump said this week that his administration had reached an agreement with European allies to provide new weapons for use by Ukraine and warned that he could impose new tariffs on Russia in 50 days unless it made a deal to end the war in that time.

Trump counselled Zelensky to take the war to Russia and asked whether Kyiv was able to hit Moscow and St Petersburg. Picture: AFP

Trump’s hardened tone toward Russian President Vladimir Putin followed a monthslong campaign by European leaders to persuade the US President to arm Kyiv and pressure Putin into serious negotiations.

Trump has publicly called on both Kyiv and Moscow to refrain from long-range strikes on each other’s cities. But earlier this month, according to a senior Ukrainian official, he counselled Zelensky to take the war to Russia and asked whether Kyiv was able to hit Moscow and St Petersburg.

The Ukrainian official familiar with the call said Zelensky suggested to the US president during the conversation that Ukraine needed long-range precision American weapons, the sort that would make strikes inside Russia more damaging.

The White House offered a different interpretation of the July 4 call between the two leaders this week, saying Trump “was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing.”

On Thursday, Zelensky said in an interview with the New York Post that he was discussing a “megadeal” with Trump that would see the US buy battlefield-tested Ukrainian drones in exchange for Kyiv agreeing to buy weapons from the US.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment.

Zelensky said the possible agreement would allow both countries to develop aerial technology. Ukraine has dramatically expanded its production of drones, with dozens of factories across the country manufacturing millions of the explosive unmanned aircraft each year. Zelensky said it would trade lessons from the war with the US military, which has identified drone production as a priority.

Russia and Ukraine continue the process of fulfilling agreements struck in the course of peace talks that took place during the spring in Istanbul but which have since stalled. On Thursday, senior Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russia’s delegation in those talks, said that the Russian side had handed over the bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in fighting.

Medinsky said Kyiv had handed over 19 dead Russian soldiers, a figure confirmed by a Ukrainian official familiar with the matter. The official said Ukraine can’t collect the bodies of dead Russian soldiers to hand over to Russia, because the territory on which these bodies lie is an area of active hostilities.

Wall Street Journal