A wave of almost 600 Ukrainian drones attacked Russia overnight killing four people, authorities said on Sunday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the barrage an 'entirely justified' retribution for Moscow's own pummelling of Ukraine.
Air defences shot down 556 drones overnight across the country, Russia's defence ministry said, with another 30 drones intercepted after dawn in one of the largest Ukrainian barrages of the ongoing conflict so far.
These interceptions — far above the few dozen more often reported — took place across 14 Russian regions, as well as the Crimean peninsula annexed from Ukraine and the Black and Azov seas, the ministry added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv's attack on Russia — days after a massive drone and missile bombardment of the Ukrainian capital killed at least 24 people — was "entirely justified".
"Our responses to Russia's prolongation of the war and its attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified. This time, Ukrainian long-range sanctions reached the Moscow region, and we are clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war."
The Ukrainian defence ministry said that Moscow and the region "have experienced the largest-scale attack since the full-scale attack began" in February 2022.
Ukraine's priority "remains the consistent build-up in the use of long-range strike capabilities to the fullest extent possible against a wide range of military targets," Commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Forces, Robert Brovdi, said in a recent, exclusive interview before the strikes.
In Russia's capital region, "a woman was killed as a result of a UAV hitting a private house," governor Andrey Vorobyov posted on Telegram, adding that the early morning attack also claimed the lives of two men.
One of the victims was an Indian citizen working in Russia, the Indian embassy in Moscow said in a statement.
Vorobyov added that infrastructure facilities had been targeted.
Within the capital, local authorities reported that air defence systems had intercepted more than 80 drones overnight, wounding 12 people.
One of the strikes wounded construction workers at a job site near an oil and gas refinery, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
"Refinery production has not been disrupted. Three residential buildings were damaged," he added.
While the capital region is often subjected to drone attacks, the city of Moscow, around 400 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, is less frequently targeted.
"The hit was so powerful that it almost knocked me out (of bed), and I weigh a lot. I opened my window and saw smoke rising," Konstantin, a 39-year-old resident of the area where a high-rise was damaged in the Putilkovo neighbourhood, outside Moscow, said on the site.
In the Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, one man was killed overnight in the Shebekino district in a drone attack on a lorry, regional authorities said.
The Ukrainian air force said meanwhile it had intercepted 279 Russian drones out of a total of 287 launched.
Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have been at a standstill, with Kyiv unwilling to accept Moscow's maximalist demands for territory in the eastern Donbas region, saying it would be tantamount to surrender.
While the United States has pushed for both sides to come to the negotiating table, the talks have noticeably stalled since Washington's attention turned to the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February. - AFP
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