Ukraine carried out one of its largest drone attacks on Russian territory overnight, Russian authorities and Ukrainian officials said, killing at least four people and wounding about a dozen others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strikes and described them as justified responses to recent Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Russian regional officials said three people were killed in suburbs northwest and north of Moscow. A woman died when a drone struck her home in Khimki, and two men were killed in the village of Pogorelki, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the capital, according to Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev. A separate death was reported in Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine, after a drone hit a truck.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported at least 12 people were wounded in the overnight attack, mostly near the entrance to the city’s oil refinery; he said the refinery’s technology was not damaged. Debris from drones also fell on the grounds of Sheremetyevo, Russia’s largest airport, but officials said there was no damage to facilities and flights were unaffected. Vorobyev said drones had damaged unspecified infrastructure and several high-rise buildings in the region.
Russian air defenses were reported to have intercepted large numbers of incoming drones. Tass, citing Sobyanin, reported 81 drones were shot down en route to Moscow. Russia’s defense ministry said 556 drones were destroyed over Russian territory overnight and later reported that more than 1,000 drones had been shot down or jammed in the previous 24 hours.
Zelenskyy said the drones had flown more than 500 kilometers (about 310 miles) from Ukrainian territory and that Ukrainian forces were overcoming air defenses concentrated around the capital. He framed the operation as a justified response to Russia’s continued attacks and said the strikes were meant to signal to Russians that the state must end its war.
Analysts saw the strikes as a deliberate demonstration of reach. Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the operation looked like the retaliation Zelenskyy had promised after heavy Russian attacks on Kyiv. Gould-Davies said the strikes underscore Ukraine’s capacity to hit targets at significant scale around the Russian capital and could intensify public anxiety inside Russia, though he judged they were unlikely in the short term to force Moscow to make compromises toward peace.
Ukrainian drone operations have also targeted oil facilities deep inside Russia, producing large fires and smoke plumes visible from satellite imagery and, in some cases, causing localized environmental effects. Those strikes aim to reduce Russia’s oil exports, a key revenue source for Moscow, though analysts say the broader economic impact is complicated by other global energy developments.
The latest exchange came amid continued Russian attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities said Russia launched 287 drones toward Ukraine overnight; Kyiv’s air force said 279 were shot down or jammed. The strikes wounded eight people in central Dnipropetrovsk region — three in the regional capital Dnipro, four in Kryvyi Rih, and one in Synelnykove — and damaged residential buildings in those areas, the state emergency service reported.
Both sides reported large-scale use of unmanned systems and active air defenses, and officials on each side described the operations as part of broader campaign objectives rather than isolated strikes. The attacks mark an intensification of long-range drone use and underscore the conflict’s continuing reach beyond front lines.