Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky [Getty Images]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky [Getty Images]

Ukraine launched another drone strike on Moscow on Tuesday local time, with Kyiv claiming the operation also hit a Russian satellite communications center.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine struck the Dubna satellite communications center in Moscow Oblast.

The Dubna facility is an advanced rear communications center the Russian military uses for intelligence gathering, located about 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Ukraine had already struck the site on June 22 and carried out the latest attack roughly a week later.

However, Russia has not officially confirmed that the Dubna communications center was hit.

Moscow Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov said only that a Ukrainian drone struck an "administrative building" in a town, with no casualties reported.

Vorobyov also wrote on his Telegram channel that a drone had crashed in Yegoryevsk, southeast of Moscow, killing a six-month-old infant.

Russia's Ministry of National Defense said it shot down a total of 419 drones over areas including Moscow and Crimea.

Both sides dig in as peace talks remain distant

Amid the escalating strikes — part of what Zelensky has called a "40-day operation" — the Ukrainian president also took to social media to mock Russia over its repeated failures to seize Ukrainian territory.

Zelensky said Russia had been given no fewer than 15 self-imposed deadlines to capture Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast since the war began, each one missed. "The Russian military has been given a whopping 15 chances to capture our Donetsk Oblast since the war started," he said, pointing to the repeated postponements.

He also dismissed Russian claims that Moscow could fully occupy the Donbas region — encompassing Donetsk and Luhansk — as "delusion."

Russia has continued to strike back, and the two sides remain locked in an escalating standoff.

There are no signs yet that cease-fire negotiations will resume. The United States, which had positioned itself as a mediator, faces mounting distractions: even after reaching a cease-fire agreement with Iran, Washington is contending with ongoing instability around the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of the Middle East crisis, leaving it little room to play an active role in the Ukraine conflict for now.


yul@heraldcorp.com