Ukraine strikes Russian supply hubs as political unrest grows in Kyiv
Ukraine's targeting of Russian logistics centres exposes a deepening economic toll on Moscow's supply chains, even as rare domestic protests over a military leadership shake-up threaten Kyiv's own stability.
Russia struck Kyiv on Sunday, killing one person and wounding 13 across six districts. The bombardment hit residential buildings, a supermarket, and a shopping centre, with one explosion powerful enough to set off car alarms in the city centre. A separate Russian drone strike also killed one person in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, regional official Oleksandr Ganzha said.
The attacks came in direct retaliation for a Ukrainian drone assault on e-commerce warehouses near Moscow the previous day. Saturday's strike on logistics facilities in the Moscow and Tambov regions killed eight people and sparked major fires. On the Russian side, a Ukrainian strike also killed one person in the Kursk region, regional governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the warehouses were targeted because they were used "to supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment." Kyiv is increasingly treating cross-border drone strikes as economic warfare, a campaign it calls "long-range sanctions." By systematically targeting Russia's oil infrastructure and now major e-commerce logistics hubs, Ukraine is straining supply chains and has already triggered a full-blown fuel crisis inside one of the world's largest oil-producing nations.
The volume of these unmanned attacks is unprecedented. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that more than 370 drones were launched toward the capital overnight, following nearly 1,892 intercepts between July 11 and 18. This scale underscores how the conflict is permanently altering the risk profile for commercial and industrial assets deep inside Russian territory.
Domestic instability
The escalation in cross-border strikes coincides with a rare moment of domestic political instability in Ukraine. For a third consecutive day on Saturday, thousands of protesters gathered in major Ukrainian cities to demonstrate against the sudden removal of defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
Fedorov, a tech-focused minister, was ousted in a surprise government reshuffle just as Ukraine appeared to gain battlefield momentum. During his six months in office, he clashed repeatedly with army chief Oleksandr Syrsky, 60, over efforts to digitise and modernise a military strained by years of continuous combat.
Zelensky's subsequent two days of meetings with top military commanders have fuelled media speculation that Syrsky could also be replaced. For European investors and defence contractors, this internal friction highlights a critical vulnerability: Ukraine's ability to absorb Western military and technological aid depends heavily on institutional stability, which is now facing unexpected public scrutiny.
