Moscow comes under ‘massive’ drone attack leaving civilians killed and three injured, Russian officials say as they blame Ukraine on day of crunch peace talks with US
Moscow comes under ‘massive’ drone attack leaving civilians killed and three injured, Russian officials say as they blame Ukraine on day of crunch peace talks with US
Russia has been bombarded in the biggest Ukrainian drone attack of the war, Moscow officials have said, on the same day as crunch talks are set to be held between Kyiv and the United States.
The Russian Defence Ministry said air defences shot down 337 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions overnight, a record high, as Ukraine hit back at a series of brutal recent attacks launched by Moscow.
At least one Russian civilian has been killed and several injured, with dramatic footage showing fires raging from the exploding drones including in high rise residential buildings near Moscow.
The attack came as a Ukrainian delegation was set to meet with America’s top diplomat Marco Rubio in Saudi Arabia about ending the three-year war with Russia.
Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Jeddah for talks with the Saudi Crown Prince yesterday, will not stay for today’s meeting, which marks a new diplomatic push after the Ukrainian President’s explosive row with Donald Trump last week.
There has been no immediate comment from Kyiv on the strikes which shook Moscow and other Russian regions overnight.
The most drones – 126 – were shot down over Kursk across the border from Ukraine, parts of which Kyiv‘s forces control, while 91 were shot down over the Moscow region.
Other areas impacted by the strikes included Belgorod, Bryansk and Voronezh on the border with Ukraine and those deeper inside Russia, such as Kaluga, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Oryol and Ryazan.
Earlier, Ukraine made a rare deployment of US-supplied HIMARS missiles against Russian territory at Dobrynya shopping centre in Belaya Sloboda, Kursk region, where four people were reported killed and 10 injured, including several teenagers.
One drone exploded in Kurchatov, a town close to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, seen on footage and leading to a small fire.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said over 70 drones targeted the Russian capital and were shot down as they were flying toward it.
Drones were shot down in the Ramensky and Domodedovo districts of the Moscow region surrounding the Russian capital, he said on the messaging app Telegram.
Twenty people – including two children – were injured during the attack by drones flying to Moscow, in Vidnoye, Ramenskoye and Domodedovo, said reports.
Hundreds of people were also forced to evacuate their homes as the drones rained down.
The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, said one person was killed and three more wounded as a result of the drone attack.
The attack damaged seven apartments in a residential building in the Ramensky district, he said.
It also set cars on fire in a parking lot in the Domodedovo district, according to Russian state news agencies RIA Novosti and Tass.
A drone exploded as it hit a residential building in Ramenskoye, Moscow region, with the shock waves blowing out windows on the top floors of the building.
A residential building in Vidnoye, Moscow region was also hit with the windows blasted out and a hole in the roof.
Several other buildings were hit in Vidnoye, where six people including a child were injured, and a downed drone hit Lyubertsy in Moscow.
A two-story house in the village of Sofyino, Moscow region also ignited.
All four main Moscow airports – Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukova and Zhukovsky – were disrupted by the drone onslaught leading to dozens of arrival diversions and delayed takeoffs.
Nizhny Novgorod airport east of the capital was also temporarily closed.
A main railway line linking Domodedovo airport to Moscow city was hit with a ‘deafening explosion’ as a car park ignited in fire at the nearby car park of Miratorg meat processing plant, where a 37-year-old security guard was killed.
Twenty cars were burned out with a witness telling RBC: ‘The night shift was ending, the staff were about to leave the building when there was a loud roar. My Volkswagen Polo was damaged, but not as much as my comrades’ cars.’
Mash news outlet said Ukraine had used AN-196 Liutyi domestically-made drones as the mainstay of the overnight strikes.
A resident on Domodedovskaya Street in Moscow said she heard the drone – ‘the sound of a moped – and it crashes into the house, there’s an orange flash and that’s it’.
A key focus of the Ukrainian strikes was Kursk region, where thousands of Kyiv’s troops risk being surrounded by Russian forces backed by North Korean fighters.
Other regions hit in the concerted Ukrainian offensive included Lipetsk and Tula.
A Russian defence ministry source said: ‘This is an attempt to divert attention from the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region.
‘The chaotic massive attack on residential buildings was supposed to give hope for another ‘victory’ and morally prepare the Ukrainian troops for the retreat from the Sudzhansky district [Kursk].
‘But even this failed – the air defence worked flawlessly.’
However, the full extent of damage of the Ukrainian strikes was not immediately clear.
Almost 90 civilians from various regions of the Russian Federation suffered from strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces over the past week, with ten killed, including a child, said Russian Ambassador-at-Large, Rodion Miroshnik.
Russia hit Ukraine with overnight strikes on Kyiv and Odesa, where an oil depot and residential building was hit by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armed forces.
Reports said that Zelensky had written to apologise for the White House meeting which led to deep trains with Trump.
Talks between Ukraine and the US are due in Saudi Arabia today, where it is expected Kyiv will propose an air and naval ceasefire.
Meanwhile it has been reported that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff plans to meet with Putin in Moscow later this week.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this morning that people were rushing to view recent US actions on Ukraine through ‘rose-tinted spectacles,’ but warned Russia had to always be ready to defend its own interests.
Peskov also reportedly accused the West of waging a proxy war against Russia and saying that the amount of weapons in Ukraine was so large that even if deliveries stopped it would be many months before Kyiv would run out.
