Four killed in Ukraine’s largest drone assault on Moscow in over a year

At least four people were killed, including three in the Moscow region, after Ukraine carried out what Russian officials described as the biggest overnight drone attack on the Russian capital in more than a year, authorities said on Sunday, 17 May.

Another person died in Russia’s Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border, according to local officials. Russia’s defence ministry said that by midday, its forces had intercepted more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones across the country over the previous 24 hours.

The attack came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pledged retaliation following Russia’s largest combined drone and missile assault on Kyiv over a two-day period since the war began more than four years ago.

Zelenskyy confirmed the strikes by posting a video on X showing a drone in flight, thick black smoke rising into the air and firefighters battling blazes. “Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and its attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” Zelenskyy posted.

He claimed Ukraine had demonstrated the ability to strike targets located over 500 km from the border despite Moscow’s extensive air defence systems. “We are clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war,” he said.

Russia’s foreign ministry accused Kyiv of deliberately targeting civilians. “To the sound of Eurovision songs, the Kyiv regime, financed by the EU, carried out yet another mass terrorist attack,” TASS quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova as saying.

Both Russia and Ukraine deny intentionally attacking civilian targets.

Ukraine has intensified long-range drone operations inside Russian territory in recent weeks, focusing on energy and logistics infrastructure such as oil refineries, fuel depots and pipelines as both sides attempt to weaken each other’s operational capabilities.

TASS quoted Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin as saying that Russian air defence systems had shot down 81 drones approaching Moscow since midnight, making it the heaviest attack on the capital in over a year.

According to Sobyanin, 12 people were injured, most of them near the entrance to Moscow’s oil refinery. Three residential buildings were also damaged, though he said the refinery’s “technology” systems remained unaffected.

Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman was killed after a residential building in Khimki, north of Moscow, was struck. Rescue workers were still searching the rubble for another person, he added. Two men were also killed in Pogorelki village in the Mytishchi district, Vorobyov said, adding that several apartment blocks and infrastructure facilities sustained damage in the attacks.

Sheremetyevo Airport, Russia’s busiest airport, said drone debris had fallen within its premises but caused no damage.

With agency inputs