Ukraine Pummels Moscow With Largest Drone Assault Since 2022, Killing 4 and Wounding a Dozen

One of Ukraine's largest drone assaults on Russia since the start of the war killed at least four people and wounded a dozen others early Sunday, with hundreds of attack drones penetrating defenses around Moscow in what local authorities called the heaviest strike on the capital region in more than a year. Russian air defenses claimed to have shot down 556 drones overnight across 14 regions, including 81 headed for Moscow itself.

A woman was killed when a drone hit her home in Khimki, a city of about 250,000 just northwest of Moscow that hosts Russia's busiest international airport. Two men died in the village of Pogorelki, in the Mytishchi district roughly 10 kilometers north of the capital, after debris from another intercepted drone slammed into their truck. A fourth man was killed in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, when a drone struck a separate vehicle on a highway. At least 12 people were wounded in Moscow itself, mostly near the entrance to the city's main oil refinery, where a major fire burned for hours.

Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, the country's busiest, reported that drone debris fell on its grounds without damaging facilities or disrupting flights, though arrivals and departures were briefly delayed. Two oil-pumping stations were also struck, sending Russian benchmark gasoline futures higher. Ukrainian officials said the drones flew more than 500 kilometers from Ukrainian territory to reach their targets, threading their way through layered Russian air-defense belts that have been progressively reinforced around the capital since the start of the war.

"This time, Ukrainian long-range capabilities reached the Moscow region, and we are clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, calling the strikes "entirely justified." Zelenskyy framed the operation as proof that Ukraine has "overcome" the dense screen of Pantsir and S-400 systems Russia has poured into the area around Moscow at the expense of frontline coverage.

Russia retaliated overnight with its own missile and Shahed-drone barrage on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and Kyiv suburbs, although officials in Kyiv said most of the inbound weapons were intercepted. Sunday's exchange — among the largest tit-for-tat air operations of the war — comes as European officials in Brussels press the United States to release the next tranche of frozen Russian sovereign-asset financing earmarked for Ukrainian air defense, and as Vladimir Putin prepares for a state visit to Beijing in the coming days. Western military analysts said the symbolic damage of striking deep inside the Moscow region may matter more than the physical toll, and could complicate the Kremlin's domestic narrative that the war is contained to "special military operation" zones near the Ukrainian border.