At least three people have lost their lives, and 18 others, including three children, have been injured in what appears to be Ukraine’s most extensive drone assault on Moscow since the war began.
According to reports from Russian media citing health officials, the casualties occurred in the towns of Vidnoye and Domodedovo, both located just outside the Russian capital.
Among the deceased was a 50-year-old man who succumbed to his injuries at a hospital.
Andrei Vorobyev, the governor of the Moscow region, revealed that two of the victims had been killed at the start of their shift at a food company.
Domodedovo official Evgeniya Khrustaleva later confirmed the death of a third person.
Tass, Russia’s state news agency, reported that debris from the attack struck a distribution center, damaging over 40 vehicles.
Vorobyev detailed the critical conditions of two hospitalized victims in Domodedovo: a 43-year-old woman suffering from severe abdominal injuries, including intestinal damage, and a 44-year-old man with wounds to his torso, shoulder, and shin.
Meanwhile, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed that seven apartments in a residential building sustained damage, with drone wreckage causing minor harm to a building’s roof. He noted that 12 residents, including three children, had to be evacuated for safety reasons.
Flight operations at Moscow’s major airports, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo, and Zhukovsky, were temporarily halted following the attack, alongside restrictions at airports in Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod.
However, Russian media later reported that flights had resumed at Sheremetyevo.
The attack took place mere hours before a high-stakes meeting in Saudi Arabia between Ukrainian representatives and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, aimed at resolving the conflict.
This marks the first official engagement between the U.S. and Ukraine since last month’s heated exchange between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House.
Ahead of the talks, Rubio suggested that Ukraine might need to cede territory to Russia as part of a peace settlement, emphasizing that “there’s no military solution to this situation.”
In response to the drone attack, Russia’s defense ministry stated that 337 Ukrainian drones were either intercepted or destroyed overnight across the Moscow region and nine other areas, including Kursk.
Tass reported that 91 of these drones were shot down over Moscow’s outskirts alone.
While Ukraine has yet to issue a statement on the attack, Kyiv also came under heavy bombardment overnight. Ukrainian officials claim that Russia launched 126 drones targeting the capital and multiple regions.
The country’s air force reported shooting down 79 of these drones, along with an Iskander-M ballistic missile. Additionally, 35 drones were said to have been neutralized by electronic warfare countermeasures, though the fate of the remaining 12 remains uncertain.
Authorities have not yet confirmed whether the Russian strikes on Ukraine resulted in casualties.
