Ukraine launched a massive drone attack against Russia on Sunday, launching more than 1,000 drones into Russian territory and conducting what the mayor of Moscow called the “largest attack” targeting the Russian capital of the war.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that overnight, its forces intercepted 1,110 Ukrainian drones over about 20 Russian regions and the Black Sea. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin put the number higher, saying 1,600 drones were launched into Russia, including 450 that were headed toward Moscow.
“The largest enemy drone attack on Moscow has been repelled,” Sobyanin wrote on Telegram. “Since yesterday, over 1,600 UAVs have been repelled at all front lines. Of these, 450 were approaching Moscow.”
The mayor added that residential buildings were damaged and the Moscow Refinery was hit, as Ukraine continues to strike Russian energy infrastructure despite President Trump’s calls for Ukraine to stop such attacks. Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks are known to be supported by US intelligence, so if Trump really wanted the strikes to end, he would need to cut off such support.
Trump had also recently claimed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed not to target each other’s energy sites, but it was quickly apparent that was not true. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Ukraine’s “long-range responses had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night” and that one of “Russia’s key oil industry facilities and the aggressor’s logistics facility were hit.”
Sobyanin said there were no casualties in the city, but Andrey Vorobyov, the governor of the surrounding Moscow Oblast, said three people were killed in the Moscow region and at least 20, including three children, were wounded. Russian officials also alleged that two civilians were killed by a Ukrainian drone attack that hit a bus in the Russian-controlled side of Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast. The heavy Ukrainian attacks came as elections were being held in Russia and Russian-controlled territories.
Russian missiles and drones have also continued to pound Ukraine, and Ukrainian media reported that a woman and her two children were killed by attacks in the Kyiv Oblast on Saturday. Ukrainian officials said that a Russian drone hit a monastery that’s near the frontline in Kherson and that one clergy member was killed.
According to the news service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), a Russian drone hit the St. Gregory Bizyukov Monastery in the village of Chervonyi Mayak on Saturday, killing the “oldest monk”, identified as Monk Moses, and wounding four others. So far, Russia hasn’t responded to the allegation that its forces hit a monastery.
The UOC has been the target of a Zelensky government crackdown, which has involved kicking its clergy out of some churches and monasteries, including the historic Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv, in favor of the Ukrainian-state-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The UOC has been targeted, and its priests have been imprisoned due to its historic links to Russia, though the UOC declared its full independence from the Moscow Patriarchate following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which it strongly denounced.
