Ukraine said it struck a major satellite communications facility north of Moscow for the second time in nine days during a large long-range drone operation. Russian authorities did not confirm damage to the Dubna centre, but acknowledged that a drone hit an administrative building in the town without causing reported casualties.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the Dubna Satellite Communications Centre, about 500 kilometres from Ukraine, as supporting Russian military coordination and intelligence gathering. Ukraine’s military had previously claimed to hit the same complex on June 22. After that earlier incident, Russian state agency TASS reported a large drone assault but said employees were unharmed and television and communications services continued.
The June 30 attack extended well beyond Dubna. Moscow regional governor Andrey Vorobyov said a drone crashed into a house in Yegoryevsk, southeast of the capital, leaving people beneath rubble. Rescue crews freed two adults and two children, but a six-month-old baby died while being taken to hospital, according to the governor.
Authorities in the western Tver region separately said a 61-year-old woman was killed when a downed drone struck a residential summer property. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned the operation and pointed to the civilian deaths. The casualty and operational accounts came from Russian officials and were not independently verified in the supplied reporting.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said air defences destroyed more than 60 aircraft approaching the capital after successive waves began on Monday night. Russia’s Defence Ministry placed the nationwide total much higher, claiming that 419 drones had been intercepted or destroyed. Neither figure established how many weapons reached intended targets.
Kyiv has increasingly sent drones farther into Russia, often against oil-processing facilities, while also mounting substantial attacks around Moscow and St Petersburg. Zelensky had announced a 40-day effort intended to increase pressure on the Kremlin to end the war. The Ukrainian military said its ability to reach the two largest Russian cities reflected a gap opened in Russian air defences by systematic attacks on radar sites in the Bryansk border region.
The competing statements left important parts of the Dubna episode unresolved. Ukraine identified the satellite centre as its target and said the mission succeeded; Moscow’s regional government referred only to an administrative structure in the same town. With Russia acknowledging the wider raid and reporting deaths at two residential locations, the operation demonstrated both Ukraine’s expanding reach and the civilian danger created when drones or intercepted wreckage fall far from the front. Russian authorities reported no casualties from the acknowledged impact in Dubna itself.
