IN BRIEF
- Russian air defences shot down over 550 drones overnight across the country, its defence ministry said.
- One of the victims was an Indian citizen working in Russia.
In a significant escalation, Ukraine launched its most extensive drone assault on Moscow in over a year, resulting in at least four fatalities. Three of the victims were in the Moscow area.
Authorities in the Belgorod region, which lies adjacent to northeastern Ukraine, reported a fourth casualty. Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry announced that by midday, they had intercepted and destroyed over 1,000 Ukrainian drones within the past 24 hours.
This development follows a pledge by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday to retaliate after enduring Russia’s most intense drone and missile strikes on Kyiv over a two-day period since the onset of the conflict more than four years ago.
President Zelenskyy confirmed the recent attack by sharing a video on the platform X, depicting a drone in action, plumes of black smoke, and fire crews battling to control the blaze.
“Our responses to Russia’s continuation of warfare and its attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” he asserted.
He added that Ukraine was able to strike targets more than 500km from the border despite dense Russian air defences around Moscow.
“We are clearly telling the Russians: Their state must end its war,” he said.
Speaking later in his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s increased military activity had produced a “change in the balance of actions at the front, which is now tangible”.
“For instance, the activity indicators for today are such that our active measures are greater than those of Russia. This is a very substantial result,” he said, without elaborating.
Russia’s foreign ministry accused Kyiv of targeting civilians.
“To the sound of Eurovision songs, the Kyiv regime, financed by the EU, carried out yet another mass terrorist attack,” TASS news agency cited the ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.
Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians.
Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on targets deep inside Russia in recent weeks, aiming to knock out oil refineries, depots and pipelines, as both sides seek to degrade each other’s infrastructure.
TASS cited Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin as saying air defences had destroyed 81 drones headed for Moscow since midnight, the largest attack on the capital in more than a year.
Sobyanin said 12 people were wounded, mostly near the entrance to Moscow’s oil refinery, while three houses were damaged. The “technology” of the refinery was not damaged, he said.
Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman was killed when a home was hit in Khimki, north of the capital, adding that rescuers were searching the debris for another person. Two men were killed in the village of Pogorelki in the Mytishchi district.
One of the victims was an Indian citizen working in Russia, the Indian embassy in Moscow said in a statement.
Several residential high-rises and infrastructure facilities were damaged, he said.
The country’s largest airport, Moscow’s Sheremetyevo, said drone debris had fallen on its territory but caused no damage.
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