Ukraine Hits Moscow with Biggest Drone Attack in Over a Year; Four Dead
Ukraine launched its largest overnight drone attack on the Moscow region in more than a year on Sunday, killing at least four people including three near the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences had destroyed 81 drones headed for Moscow since midnight; twelve people were wounded, mostly near the entrance to Moscow’s oil refinery. Russia’s defence ministry said more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones had been downed across the country in the past 24 hours. Russia hit Odesa, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson overnight on 17-18 May in response, killing one and injuring more than 30 including a 2-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and an 11-year-old boy.
Ukraine’s General Staff said one strike triggered a fire at a plant outside Moscow producing high-precision weapons. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted on X: “Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and its attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified… We are clearly telling the Russians: Their state must end its war.” Zelenskiy said Ukraine had struck targets more than 500 kilometres from the border despite dense Russian air defences around Moscow. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Kyiv of targeting civilians: “To the sound of Eurovision songs, the Kyiv regime, financed by the EU, carried out yet another mass terrorist attack.” The Moscow attack follows Russia’s heaviest drone and missile attack on Kyiv over a two-day period on 14-15 May, in which 24 people were killed in a single apartment block.