Ukrainian drones have targeted a major logistics center outside Moscow, setting it ablaze
Waves of Ukrainian drones targeted the massive logistics center outside Moscow overnight. The next morning, it was still ablaze, dark smoke rising into the sky from what was one of Russia’s largest retail warehouses.
Hundreds of miles away, Ukrainian drone crews had barely paused after the night’s work before starting to prepare for another attack.
A small group of soldiers quickly assembled in a sunflower field in southern Ukraine, gathering around 20 small planelike drones laden with explosives, before launching them toward Russia.
The launch by the Ukrainian 413th “Raid” Unmanned Systems Regiment on Sunday morning was observed by a team of Associated Press journalists — a rare glimpse into a rapidly expanding part of Ukraine’s war effort.
It's Ukraine's latest tactic — long-range drones designed to carry the war deep inside Russia, striking military, industrial and logistical sites far from the front line.
Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant.
Those attacks have brought the war home to the Russian public, nearly 4½ years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The scale of the attacks has also forced Russia’s military to stretch air defenses over a larger area, disrupted airports, sparked fuel shortages and undermined morale in Russia.
The regiment's commander, Yevhen Karas, said his unit had also taken part hours earlier in the strike on the Wildberries warehouse, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Moscow, during one of Ukraine’s largest attacks on Russia to date.
Ukraine will need to punish the Kremlin “if we want to get a stable and long period of peace, and normal peace,” Karas said.
“The bigger casualties they have,” the sooner they will go for peace, he added.
Kyiv officials aim to make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no sign he intends to end the war.
Karas, however, believes the impact of Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign on Russia’s economy is bringing home the cost of the war to ordinary Russians and hopes this will drive Moscow back to the negotiating table after months of U.S.-brokered talks between the two sides stalled.
On Sunday morning, before the drones took to the skies, Karas took out a black marker and wrote a message on the fuselage: “Moscow burns under the sky, red flame rises so warm and high, dark smoke moves above the town, fire lights the night all around.”
Like the majority of Ukraine’s serving military, Karas had a very different life before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
