A new wave of cross-border drone strikes has killed three civilians and left multiple others injured in the Moscow region early Sunday, according to senior Russian regional officials, in what marks the latest escalation in aerial attacks between Russia and Ukraine amid the ongoing full-scale invasion.
Andrei Vorobiev, governor of the Moscow region, announced via Telegram that Russian air defense units had been working to repel a large-scale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack targeting the area surrounding Russia’s capital starting from 3 a.m. local time. Among the casualties, a woman lost her life in Khimki, a city located just north of Moscow, where one person was initially trapped under collapsed building rubble. Two more civilians – another woman and a man – were killed in the village of Pogorelki. Vorobiev added that four additional people, three men and one woman, were wounded across the region, and multiple residential properties sustained structural damage. A private residence also caught fire in Subbotino, a village southwest of Moscow, he confirmed.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that 12 people were injured when multiple drones struck the entrance gate of a major oil refinery within city limits. Three nearby residential buildings were also damaged in the strike. Russia’s busiest international airport, Sheremetyevo, which serves the Moscow area, later announced that drone wreckage was found on its grounds, but no injuries were reported. Airport authorities stated that operations remained unaffected: “The situation in the passenger terminals is calm. Sheremetyevo Airport is providing stable passenger and aircraft services.”
The Russian military claimed it intercepted a total of 55 Ukrainian drones, the highest number of intercepted UAVs in a single attack on the Moscow region in recent months.
Parallel to the strikes on Russian territory, Russia carried out its own overnight barrage of drone attacks and artillery shelling across Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region. Oleksandr Hanzha, the region’s top administrative official, said more than 30 separate strikes targeted four districts, leaving eight people injured and dozens of residential structures damaged or destroyed. Three of the injured were in the regional capital Dnipro, where multiple blazes broke out across the city following the attacks.
The overnight strikes came just days after a massive Russian drone and missile assault on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv killed 24 people, and one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly pledged to retaliate for that deadly attack. “This week Ukraine has already destroyed high-value Russian military equipment, including aircraft, a helicopter and a cargo ship,” Zelenskyy said Saturday. “Our long-range sanctions also hit Russian oil facilities and ships. Most of the operations are still ongoing.”
Ukrainian officials have not yet issued any public comment on Sunday’s strikes against the Moscow region. In recent months, Ukrainian military forces have stepped up their drone campaign targeting key energy and industrial infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly stated that these strikes are against legitimate military-related targets, as the facilities help Russia sustain its full-scale invasion that began in 2022.
In another separate incident Saturday evening, one woman was wounded in a Russian drone attack in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, local officials confirmed. In an updated statement Sunday, Ukraine’s Air Force reported that Russia launched 287 drones against Ukrainian territory starting late Saturday. Air defense units intercepted or shot down 279 of those unmanned aircraft, but direct hits were recorded at seven different locations across the country, the statement added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Russian forces currently occupy roughly 18% of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides and displaced millions more since the invasion began.