Ukraine Takes the Fight to Russia's Doorstep: Finland Detects a Strike on a Russian Warship as a Car Bomb Rocks Moscow

The war in Ukraine is creeping closer to NATO's front door. Finland's military said it detected a strike on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland area, and on Friday morning a car bomb in southern Moscow gravely wounded a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian exile, the second car bombing in Russia in two days. Both came as President Trump's envoys shuttled between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky in search of a peace deal.

A spokesperson for the Finnish military told Reuters by email that its forces had detected a strike on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland area and had monitored the situation, Al Jazeera reported. The spokesperson said Finland faces no immediate military threat but gave no details on where the strike came from, its exact location or timing, or how it was detected.

Reuters said it was not immediately clear whether there were casualties or what caused the Wednesday strike. Finnish local media reported that the ship was a small Russian navy vessel that returned to St. Petersburg after the attack, and Finnish broadcaster Yle reported that Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, said it carried out the attack, according to Al Jazeera. Russia has said it intercepted at least 146 Ukrainian drones over the Leningrad region in recent days.

The incident set the region on edge. On Wednesday, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania told citizens to take shelter because of drones in their airspace, and NATO warplanes were scrambled, Al Jazeera reported.

Ukraine has hit Russia's Baltic Fleet before. In June, drones struck the Kronstadt naval base near St. Petersburg, where the corvette Boikiy was reportedly set on fire in dry dock, The War Zone reported at the time. Kronstadt sits on an island in the Gulf of Finland about 680 miles from the nearest Ukrainian border. A strike on a ship in the waters near Finland shows how far Ukraine's long-range drone program now reaches.

On Friday morning, a car exploded on Kirovogradskaya Street in Moscow's southern Chertanovo district, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing Russian media. The car, a Toyota Fortuner, was registered to Sergei Zavorotny, 72, who served as press secretary to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov under President Viktor Yanukovych and fled to Russia in 2014, where he ran a pro-Kremlin media outlet.

Russian Telegram channels, relayed by The Moscow Times and cited by the Kyiv Independent, reported that the vehicle traveled about 200 meters before the blast hit the driver's side and threw Zavorotny onto the road, where bystanders gave first aid. He reportedly suffered a brain injury, broken ribs, a badly broken leg and the loss of his left arm. Russia's Kommersant newspaper said the bomb was likely a magnetic mine and that authorities opened an attempted-murder investigation. No one has claimed responsibility.

A day earlier, a Russian Air Force colonel was killed when his car exploded near a supermarket in Shushary, outside St. Petersburg, according to Russia's Investigative Committee and the local outlet Fontanka, cited by the Kyiv Independent. In August, a car bomb in the same area killed Major Sergei Sechkov and seriously injured his wife.

The overnight air war also continued. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed more than 100 drones were shot down on their way to the capital, and fires broke out at a refinery in Volgograd after what was described as a Ukrainian drone attack, while in Kyiv three people were hurt when a downed drone damaged a medical facility, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The violence came as diplomacy reached a busy stretch. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin in Moscow on Thursday and then flew to Ireland to meet Zelensky at Casement Aerodrome near Dublin, Al Jazeera reported. Talks among Russia, Ukraine and the United States in the UAE this week produced no major breakthrough apart from an agreement to swap a large number of prisoners. Russia's TASS news agency reported the exchange should take place in two to three weeks, and Kushner wrote that the United States is working toward what would be the largest prisoner exchange of the war, potentially reuniting thousands of people with their families.

For American readers, the lesson is the one President Trump has pressed from the start: the longer this war runs, the wider it spreads. Drones in Baltic airspace force NATO allies to scramble jets, and attacks deep inside Russia raise the risk of a dangerous miscalculation on the alliance's border. A prisoner swap that brings thousands of people home would be a real step, and a reminder that an end to the killing is within reach if both sides want it.

Finland has not said where the strike originated, and Russia has not commented on the warship. The prisoner exchange is expected within weeks. Investigators in Moscow are working the car bombing, and the envoys' next round with Russia and Ukraine is still being scheduled.