Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, cross-border drone attacks have escalated sharply over the weekend, leaving at least eight people dead across both countries and marking one of the largest daily exchanges of unmanned strikes in the conflict. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian forces had targeted key Russian maritime assets, including a Russian cruise missile carrier and three vessels belonging to Moscow’s shadow fleet of sanctioned oil tankers.
Zelensky stated the missile-carrying vessel was hit at the Port of Primorsk, located in Russia’s northwestern Leningrad Region—an area that hosts critical Russian oil export terminals that have come under repeated Ukrainian attack in recent weeks. Past strikes on these facilities have sparked large-scale blazes that sent toxic black smoke plumes into the atmosphere, with Kyiv estimating the attacks have already cut off billions of dollars in Russia’s key oil export revenue. Of the three shadow tankers targeted, one was hit at Primorsk, while the other two were struck off Russia’s southern Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Zelensky also released night-vision footage showing a Ukrainian naval drone approaching one of the tankers anchored off Novorossiysk to confirm the strike. Local Russian authorities in Leningrad Region confirmed a port fire following the Ukrainian attack, but have not released any details on the extent of damage to infrastructure or vessels.
Shadow fleet tankers are aging, unregistered or under-documented vessels that Russia relies on to ship its crude oil to global markets after Western nations imposed sweeping price caps and trade sanctions on Russian energy exports following the 2022 invasion. Sunday’s strike marks a major escalation in Ukraine’s campaign to disrupt Russia’s energy revenue stream that funds its war effort.
In a public statement on social media Sunday, Zelensky warned Moscow that Kyiv would expand retaliatory strikes on Russian energy infrastructure if Russia does not end its invasion. “Russia can end its war at any moment. Prolonging the war will only expand the scale of our defensive operations,” he said. Ukraine frames its strikes on Russian territory and energy assets as legitimate retaliation for ongoing Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
The weekend exchange of drone fire was one of the largest single-day exchanges of unmanned attacks since the war began. Kyiv’s air force reported that Russia launched 268 drones and one ballistic missile at Ukrainian targets in the overnight barrage, while Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed Ukraine launched 334 drones targeting Russian territory over the same period.
Civilian casualties were reported on both sides. On Russian-controlled territory, two people were killed in the border region of Belgorod, one person was killed near Moscow, and a teenage civilian was killed in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. On the Ukrainian side, two civilians died in attacks on the southern coastal Odesa Region, one was killed in the frontline Kherson Region, and another death was recorded in a strike on the major industrial city of Dnipro. Images released from Dnipro show the full roof of a five-story residential apartment building collapsed, with exposed wooden support beams and rubble scattered across the damaged top-floor units.
Both sides have repeatedly denied intentionally targeting civilian populations. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, tens of thousands of people have been killed, the vast majority of them Ukrainian civilians and soldiers. Data compiled by AFP from Ukrainian air force records shows that in April, Russia ramped up its long-range drone campaign to a record high, launching an average of more than 200 attack drones per day against Ukrainian targets. Diplomatic efforts to negotiate a ceasefire or end to the conflict have remained stalled for months, with neither side showing willingness to agree to major concessions to de-escalate the fighting.