Russia says air defenses downed 556 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 81 heading toward Moscow, with casualties reported in the capital region.
The Russian Defense Ministry said air defense systems shot down 556 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions during the night of May 17.
According to the ministry, the drones were intercepted and destroyed between 10:00 p.m. Moscow time on May 16 and 7:00 a.m. on May 17. The department specified that the aircraft-type UAVs were downed over the Belgorod, Kaluga, Kursk, Oryol, Bryansk, Voronezh, Tula, Smolensk, Pskov, Lipetsk, Tver and Rostov regions, as well as over Krasnodar Territory, the Moscow region, the Republic of Crimea, and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.
Missile alerts were also declared overnight in Chuvashia and in the Bryansk, Saratov, Oryol, Tula, Leningrad, Lipetsk and Penza regions. In addition, a drone threat regime had been in effect since Saturday evening in the Pskov region and Stavropol Territory.
Moscow was singled out as one of the main targets. Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that since midnight, air defense units had repelled an attack by 81 drones heading toward the capital.
The large-scale raid left 12 people injured in Moscow. Among them were construction workers near the entrance to the Moscow Oil Refinery. Three residential buildings in the city were also damaged.
In the Moscow region, three people were killed: a woman in Khimki and two men in Mytishchi. Four more people were injured in Istra, while one person remained trapped under rubble in Khimki.