Authorities in Kyiv said Russia launched its largest air attack of the war overnight Thursday, as regional officials in Russia said an elderly woman was killed and tens of thousands left without electricity after Ukrainian drone strikes targeted southern and central parts of the country.
A drone crashed into a two-story apartment building in the village of Dolotinka in the Rostov region, killing a retired teacher, acting Governor Yury Slyusar wrote on Telegram.
In the nearby town of Shakhty, another strike left 2,000 homes without electricity, though no injuries were reported, Slyusar said.
In the Moscow region, Governor Andrei Vorobyov said four drones crashed in the Sergiyev Posad district, wounding two people and damaging a power substation.
Authorities in Sergiyev Posad said 42,000 residents were left without electricity. Regional utility provider Rosseti Moscow Region later said power had been partially restored.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses shot down 48 Ukrainian drones across five regions overnight. It claimed 26 drones were intercepted over the Rostov region, but it did not report any were downed over the Moscow region.
Civil aviation authorities briefly grounded flights in Volgograd, Samara, Saratov, Yaroslavl, Kazan and Nizhnekamsk as a precaution.
Meanwhile, Ukraine reported that Russia had launched its largest aerial attack since the start of the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said Russia used a total of 550 drones and missiles in a single overnight barrage.
In Kyiv, Russian strikes wounded at least 23 people and damaged railways, forcing passenger trains to divert with delays of up to two hours, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko and Ukraine’s national railway company.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes were “evidence that without truly large-scale pressure, Russia will not change its dumb, destructive behavior.”
“For every such strike against people and human life, they must feel appropriate sanctions and other blows to their economy, their revenues, and their infrastructure,” Zelensky wrote on X.
Russia’s Defense Ministry later claimed that the overnight air assault on Ukraine was a “high-precision” response to what it called “the Kyiv regime’s acts of terrorism.”
Attacks in both countries came just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he “didn’t make any progress” on ending the war in Ukraine during the hourlong conversation.
Since taking office in January, Trump has sought to mediate a peace settlement between Kyiv and Moscow, helping facilitate the first direct peace negotiations between the warring sides since the early days of the full-scale invasion.
However, despite agreeing to a number of prisoner exchanges, Ukraine and Russia have been unable to commit to a temporary ceasefire, which the White House has been pushing for over the past several months.
And last week, Putin said Moscow and Kyiv are nowhere close to reaching a peace deal, calling Russian and Ukrainian demands for peace “absolutely contradictory.”
AFP contributed reporting.
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