Ukraine Launches More Than 600 Drones Into Russia Hitting Moscow Region Targets

Ukraine's armed forces struck targets in the Moscow region over the weekend in what Ukrainian officials described as one of the largest drone attacks of the war, with more than 600 drones launched into Russian territory. Russian authorities confirmed at least four deaths and a dozen injuries, and the Russian defense ministry claimed its air defenses destroyed 3,124 Ukrainian drones over the past week, according to a report by Time. The two largest single-day intercept totals recorded by Russia were on May 13 and May 17, when 572 and 1,054 drones were reported destroyed respectively, according to The Independent. Russia's Defense Ministry said air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 1,000 Ukrainian drones across more than a dozen regions in a single 24-hour period. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said more than 120 drones had been intercepted near Moscow, injuring 12 people near the city's oil refinery, while several residential buildings and infrastructure sites sustained damage. Ukraine's SBU security service identified two major infrastructure sites as targets. The first was the Angstrom plant in Zelenograd, which it described as specializing in the production of microelectronics, radio electronics, optical systems, and robotics for Russian military use. The second was the Solnechnogorskaya pumping station, which the SBU described as a critical part of the ring oil pipeline around Moscow used for pumping, storing, and shipping large volumes of gasoline and diesel fuel, including for the Russian army. Fires were reported at both locations. Ukraine's general staff listed the aerial weapons used in the operation, including the RS-1 Bars jet-powered UAV, the Firepoint FP-1 winged drone, and a drone previously unknown to outside analysts, referred to as the Bars-SM Gladiator. Agence France-Presse journalists were granted access to an undisclosed location where Ukraine launched its long-range drones. They described battalion members preparing plane-like drones before takeoff, with the drones leaving trails of sparks and flames from their rocket boosters. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strikes justified and described the attacks as a direct message to Russia. "Our long-range capabilities are significantly changing the situation— and, more broadly, the world's perception of Russia's war," he wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Ukrainian forces had successfully struck targets more than 500 kilometers from the border, despite what he described as the "highest" concentration of Russian air defense around Moscow. In his nightly address, Zelensky said that on Sunday, Ukrainian troops' combat operations on the battlefield outnumbered Russian ones, calling it "a very significant result." The commander of Ukraine's drone forces, Robert Brovdi, known as Madyar, gave an interview to Agence France-Presse before the weekend wave launched. He said: "The sources of funding for Putin's war expenses … have become legitimate and priority military targets in any area, in any part of the territory of the occupying country, whether we are talking about the south, the Urals, or Siberia." Russian authorities frequently characterized drone impacts as hits from debris, implying that the drones were intercepted by Russian air defenses rather than reaching intended targets. Ukraine's SBU stated the strikes "reduce the enemy's ability to continue its war." Inside Ukraine, Russian forces struck the southern city of Odesa and the city of Dnipro overnight Sunday. In Odesa, drones hit residential buildings, a school, and a kindergarten, injuring an 11-year-old boy and a 59-year-old man. Three people were injured in a missile attack on Dnipro. In the Kherson region, a drone dropped explosives on a home, killing a man, while eight more civilians were injured in attacks across the region. A suspected Ukrainian military drone also crashed in Lithuania on Sunday, the Lithuanian government's crisis management centre confirmed. The drone was found at the village of Samane, 40 kilometers from the Latvian border and 55 kilometers from Belarus. It was not armed with explosives, and Lithuanian officials said it was not detected when it entered their airspace. Kyiv had not commented as of Sunday. Latvia separately reported that a drone entered its airspace briefly during an alert along the border with Russia, prompting NATO military aircraft to respond. Several Ukrainian drones have entered the airspace of NATO members bordering Russia since March, with Kyiv attributing the incidents to Russian electronic countermeasures knocking the drones off course.