Updated May 17, 2026 — One of Ukraine’s largest drone attacks on Russian territory killed at least four people and wounded a dozen others on Sunday, Russian officials said, in a strike that reached the Moscow region and left debris at the country’s largest airport.
Russian regional authorities said a woman was killed when a drone struck her home in Khimki, just northwest of Moscow, and two men were killed in the village of Pogorelki, about six miles north of the capital. Local officials also reported a death after a drone hit a truck in the Belgorod region. Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev said drones damaged unspecified infrastructure and several high-rise buildings.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at least 12 people were wounded in the capital, mostly near the entrance to the city’s oil refinery, but that the refinery’s technology had not been damaged. Sheremetyevo Airport reported that debris from a drone fell on its grounds without causing damage or affecting flights. The Indian embassy in Russia said one Indian citizen was killed and three others were injured.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strikes and called them “entirely justified,” saying the drones had flown more than 310 miles from Ukrainian territory and that Ukraine had been overcoming Russian air defenses clustered around the capital. “Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” he said, adding that the long-range operation was meant to send a message to Moscow.
Russian officials said air defenses intercepted large numbers of incoming drones. Moscow’s authorities reported 81 drones headed for the city were shot down overnight. The Russian defense ministry said 556 drones were destroyed over Russian territory during the night and later updated that more than 1,000 drones had been shot down or jammed in the previous 24 hours.
Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the large-scale attack appeared to be the retaliation President Zelenskyy had promised after fierce Russian strikes on Kyiv. He said the strike underscored Ukraine’s ability to hit targets at significant scale near the Russian capital and would be unsettling for the Kremlin, though he saw little prospect that it would prompt Russia to make peace concessions in the near term.
Analysts note the strikes come after a recent spate of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and follow a brief lull tied to Russia’s Victory Day observances. Ukrainian drones have also struck deep into Russian territory to target oil facilities, producing visible smoke plumes and, in some cases, environmental effects such as so-called “toxic rain” reported in Black Sea tourist areas. Those strikes are aimed at reducing Moscow’s oil exports, a major source of revenue for the war effort, though the broader economic impact remains unclear amid global oil-market pressures.
Russia also launched a major drone attack on Ukraine overnight into Sunday. The Ukrainian air force said Russia sent 287 drones, of which Ukrainian defenses shot down or jammed 279. Ukrainian authorities reported eight people wounded in strikes on the Dnipropetrovsk region: three in the regional capital Dnipro, four in Kryvyi Rih, and one in the Synelnykove district, with residential buildings damaged in all three locations.
The exchanges underline an intensifying cross-border campaign in which both sides are using long-range unmanned systems to strike military and economic targets — and, increasingly, areas far from front lines. Officials on both sides reported unusually large numbers of intercepts and losses, and the attacks have heightened concern among civilians living well away from the main battlefields.