Ukrainian drones strike edge of Siberia, 16 killed as deep attacks intensify

Deepest strikes of the war

Ukraine launched more than 300 drones into Russia on Saturday 25 July, in one of the largest single-day barrages of the war. The Russian defence ministry said it intercepted 328 drones across multiple regions, including Moscow, Bashkortostan and the Chuvash Republic. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin stated that 200 drones had been heading toward the Moscow region alone. The wave reached the Ural city of Ekaterinburg, just at the entrance to Siberia, and struck a refinery in the Tyumen region roughly 1,700 kilometres east of the Russian capital. Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce giant, evacuated staff from its logistics centre in Ekaterinburg after a drone alert; the company said the site was not damaged but suspended operations following a timely evacuation. The same firm had seen its warehouses hit near Moscow, St Petersburg, Crimea and southern Russia earlier in the same week.

Eight killed in occupied Kyrylivka

In the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow-installed official Evgueni Balitsky reported that a Ukrainian strike hit a tourist camp in the village of Kyrylivka, on the Sea of Azov, killing eight people including two children. Fourteen others were wounded, among them three children. Balitsky accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians.

There are dead: eight people, including two children.

The village has been under Russian control since the first days of the full-scale offensive launched in February 2022. Ukraine has stepped up strikes on the Azov Sea in recent months, targeting Russian naval assets there. Kyiv did not immediately respond to the allegation.

Deaths on both sides of the border

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said a drone strike on a postal facility in the north-eastern city of Sumy killed three drivers. Two further people were killed in Russian strikes in southern Ukraine, according to local authorities, and one person died in the occupied part of the Kherson region. On Russian soil, the acting head of the Belgorod region, Alexandre Chouvaïev, confirmed that two people were killed in border-zone attacks. Denis Pasler, head of the Sverdlovsk region whose capital is Ekaterinburg, said there were no casualties there but the strikes caused a fire in a parking lot.

A bloody Friday and a stalled peace push

The Saturday strikes came one day after a Russian missile hit a military equipment demonstration near Kyiv on Friday, killing at least 10 people and wounding around 100 to varying degrees. That same day, a Ukrainian strike on a factory in the Russian city of Kirov, which Kyiv described as a military plant contributing to Moscow's war effort, killed five people. Kirov governor Alexandre Sokolov revised the toll down from six after a man initially presumed dead was found alive.

One of the company's employees, missing under the rubble and with whom contact could not be established, is alive.

The region declared three days of mourning. The United Nations recently warned that the number of civilians killed or wounded in the conflict jumped 37 percent in the first half of the year. Ceasefire negotiations remain deadlocked, with Washington's attention focused on the Middle East and Moscow insisting on territorial concessions from Kyiv.

Ukraine's long-range pressure campaign

Kyiv has framed the deep strikes on Russian soil, calling them long-range sanctions, as a strategy to degrade Moscow's war machine and force it to the negotiating table. The campaign has largely targeted Russian oil infrastructure and, according to some reports, has triggered a fuel crisis in one of the world's largest oil-producing countries. The Wildberries logistics network appears to have become a particular target, with repeated drone attacks hitting its hubs across Russia this week. The attack on the Tyumen refinery and the alert in Ekaterinburg mark some of the furthest confirmed Ukrainian strikes since the invasion began.