Russian air defences intercepted nearly 900 Ukrainian drones overnight over multiple regions of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Sea of Azov, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said Tuesday.
Unconfirmed media reports said a major fuel depot in the Moscow region was on fire after the attack that killed two people.
Ukraine’s domestically developed long-range drones and, increasingly, missiles have allowed Kyiv to hit Russian soil during the more than four and a half years since Moscow’s forces launched a full-scale invasion. It has hit targets as far east as the Urals and Siberia.
The bigger Russian military’s air superiority during the war has made aerial attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine routine.
Ukrainian officials are now bracing for what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Tuesday is an upcoming “massive” aerial attack by Russia.
“Today, we received updated intelligence on Russia’s preparations for a massive strike. We are preparing countermeasures,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “We set deadlines for a significant part of the tasks, and the highest-priority ones are already being implemented.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said last week that Kyiv estimates Russia is holding 600 ballistic missiles in reserve and can produce up to 140 ballistic missiles per month. Without ammunition for its U.S.-made Patriot air defence systems, which is in short supply, Ukraine is at the mercy of Russia’s ballistic weapons.
Ukraine launches one of its largest attacks inside Russia, hitting key infrastructure
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 650 drones flew toward the Moscow region between Monday evening and Tuesday morning. Most were destroyed far away, and 105 were downed as they approached the city, he said.
Sobyanin later reported 68 more drones targeting Moscow were downed during daylight on Tuesday morning.
Ukraine has regularly targeted Russian oil refineries and storage depots, claiming last weekend that it had disabled 51 per cent of Russia’s oil refining capacity. The claim could not be independently verified. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the attacks had cost Russia roughly one per cent of its gross domestic product.
Russia has traditionally been the world’s third-largest producer of refined fuel products from crude, after the U.S. and China. The Kremlin has banned diesel exports due to the Ukrainian strikes, pushing global prices higher. That prompted U.S. President Donald Trump last month to urge Ukraine to stop hitting Russia’s refineries.
After several days of targeting bridges in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, as part of a campaign to make civilian life difficult, Russia attacked one of the bridges over the Dnipro River in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, according to Mykhailo Semikin, the regional military administration chief.
Traffic across the bridge was temporarily suspended as a result of the attack, he said.
A nighttime Russian attack on a Zaporizhzhia residential building wounded five people and a daylight strike on a warehouse in the city caused a large fire, regional head Mikhail Semikin said.
Russian forces are also trying to choke shipping in Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, denying Kyiv vital grain export revenue.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces overnight struck targets in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region on the Black Sea coast with drones. An ammunition depot was hit, as were a bulk carrier in the Chornomorsk port carrying dual-use goods and port infrastructure in Izmail, the ministry said.
A Russian drone strike hit a cargo ship flying the flag of the Marshall Islands in the Black Sea, killing one person and wounding seven others, Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper said. The vessel was carrying rapeseed oil, he said.
Trump says Putin wants peace deal for Ukraine amid continued strikes
Asked about Lithuania’s offer to host a U.S. military base and the Lithuanian parliament voting on a bill to allow the deployment of nuclear weapons in the country, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the moves would escalate tensions.
“If military infrastructure belonging to a key NATO member moves closer to our borders, then naturally, this can only be perceived as a step toward escalating tensions, just like the deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of a neighboring state,” Peskov told reporters.
Trump said Monday he would consider establishing a permanent U.S. military base in Lithuania, one of three small Baltic states seen as particularly vulnerable to Russia.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned last month that Moscow is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries supporting Ukraine, which include Poland and Lithuania.
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