Russian air defenses shot down at least 201 Ukrainian drones in the Moscow region overnight and into Sunday morning, marking what city Mayor Sergey Sobyanin described as Ukraine’s largest wave of drone attacks on the Russian capital of the war to date.
Major Drone Barrage Targets Moscow and Russian Infrastructure
The 201 downed drones were part of an estimated 600 craft launched toward Moscow between Saturday evening and early Sunday morning, according to statements posted to Telegram by Mayor Sobyanin. While Sobyanin reported no initial damage or casualties within the city proper, emergency responders were deployed to sites where debris fell. Moscow’s regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov reported that one person was killed in the capital’s Ramensky district when a drone struck a residential property.
Russia’s Defense Ministry stated that its forces downed at least 822 Ukrainian drones overnight across 16 Russian regions, occupied Crimea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Local officials confirmed additional casualties, including five people killed in the Rostov region and one person killed when a drone struck a bus in the Belgorod region.
Ukrainian forces targeted industrial and logistical assets, including facilities belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries. The company reported a fire at a warehouse in the city of Podolsk, south of Moscow. The Ukrainian missile and drone production company Fire Point stated via Telegram that its weapons were used to strike a Wildberries logistics hub in Kolyadino.
The barrage disrupted commercial aviation. Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, imposed temporary flight restrictions at airports in Kaluga, Tambov, Gelendzhik and Sochi, alongside three of Moscow’s four international hubs: Vnukovo, Domedodovo and Zhukovsky.
Parallel Russian Strikes Hit Ukrainian Cities
Russia maintained its own long-range strike campaign against Ukraine overnight, launching several missiles and 106 drones. Ukraine’s air force reported that air defenses intercepted or suppressed three missiles and 85 drones, though impacts were recorded across 13 locations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that at least six people were injured in Kyiv and the surrounding region. Two people were killed by Russian strikes in Kryvyi Rih, one person died in Sumy, and two additional fatalities were reported in the southern Zaporizhzhia region by local officials.
Addressing the ongoing bombardment, President Zelenskyy urged international partners to bolster Ukraine’s air defense supplies. “When North Korean ballistic missiles destroy infrastructure and take lives here, in Europe, we cannot allow European interceptors to simply remain in storage,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
Amid the cross-border exchanges, the Romanian Defense Ministry reported that at least one drone crossed into NATO airspace from the direction of Moldova. The aircraft was tracked and shot down by a Spanish F-18 fighter jet operating under Romanian command.
