Ukraine has carried out its biggest drone strike on Moscow since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Russian media said on Sunday, as the Kremlin launched its own record air attack over Ukraine.
Three airports in the Russian capital were temporarily closed and flights were diverted. At least one person was injured. Russia said its air defences shot down 70 drones, nearly half of them in the skies above Moscow and the rest in western Russia.
The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said it successfully targeted an ammunition dump near the Russian city of Bryansk. Video showed multiple explosions coming from warehouses on the military site. Fires could be seen burning in the night sky.
Other footage posted on Russian Telegram channels recorded drones buzzing above urban areas including suburbs of multistorey buildings and a lorry park.
Ukrainian commentators said the strike on Moscow was in response to a massive Russian drone barrage directed at Kyiv on Thursday, soon after Donald Trump was elected as US president.
On Saturday and Sunday, Moscow sent over another wave of 145 drones, the largest number yet. There was damage to the Black Sea port of Odesa. Ukrainian officials said 62 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were downed and others lost en route.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had thwarted a “terrorist attack” on its territory using “airplane-type drones”. At least 36 planes were diverted, the country’s air transport agency said.
Both sides have developed innovative and increasingly sophisticated UAV programmes. Ukraine has established its own drone command and has improved the range of its systems, with attacks hundreds of kilometres into Russia. It has hit weapons storage units, oil processing facilities and enemy airstrips near the Arctic Circle, as well as naval vessels in the Caspian Sea.
Russia has begun using drones steered by fibre-optic cables in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops control a salient around the Russian town of Sudzha. The new drones cannot be jammed with regular electronic countermeasures.
The air attacks happened as Russia reportedly massed 50,000 soldiers to launch a major assault aimed at recapturing Ukrainian-held territory in Kursk oblast.
The force, which includes North Korean reinforcements, is likely to attack in the coming days, according to a US assessment cited on Sunday by the New York Times. Pyongyang has sent 11,000 troops to take part in Russia’s war against Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week.
Russia has seized a dozen or so villages and has shrunk the area controlled by Ukraine. But despite carrying out numerous attacks – using guided bombs, kamikaze drones, and infantry groups – it has been unable to dislodge dug-in Ukrainian combat units.
Trump’s victory has fuelled speculation that Russia’s 10-year-old war against its smaller neighbour may be coming to a close. Zelenskyy spoke to Trump last week and also chatted to Elon Musk, after Trump passed the phone to the billionaire.
The president-elect famously boasted he could fix the war in Ukraine in “24 hours”. Vladimir Putin has indicated he is ready to listen to what Trump has to say, with a pre-condition that the US cease military assistance to Ukraine before bilateral relations can be improved.
Zelenskyy is ready to fly to the US this week and hold substantive talks with Trump, sources in Kyiv indicated. Their most recent phone call was “very positive”, they added. The two met last month in Trump Tower when Zelenskyy flew to New York for the UN general assembly meeting.
Trump’s aides have previously sketched the outlines of a Russia-friendly “peace plan”. It would involve current frontlines being frozen, with the de facto loss by Ukraine of Crimea and much of the east of the country, plus a veto or a long-term pause on Kyiv’s Nato application. What Trump will actually propose in office remains unclear.
Musk’s views on Ukraine are wildly contradictory. He has provided Ukraine with Starlink satellite internet, which is used extensively on the frontline and is a crucial tool for Ukraine’s military. Zelenskyy thanked Musk for Starlink during their conversation. At the same time, Musk has echoed Kremlin talking points, calling for Crimea to be made part of Russia and for Ukraine to remain neutral. He has held secret talks with Putin, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
There was no sign of panic on Moscow’s boulevards after the drone attack, agencies reported on Sunday. Muscovites walked their dogs, and the bells of the onion-domed Russian Orthodox churches rang out across the capital.
