Key Points
- Two people reported killed in strikes in Saratov region.
- Drone attacks targeted infrastructure deep inside Russia.
- Ukraine has not officially commented on the operation.
MOSCOW: Russia said on Sunday that its air defence systems intercepted 635 Ukrainian drones overnight, one of the largest cross-border drone attacks since the war began, as Kyiv continued its campaign against military and economic targets.
Russian regional officials said the attacks killed at least two people in the Saratov region after a residential building was hit in Engels.
Damage was also reported to infrastructure in several regions, including a warehouse operated by one of the largest online retailers, Wildberries, in the Samara region, about 800 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Defence Ministry said the drones were intercepted across multiple regions during the overnight assault but did not provide details on how many targets were successfully struck.
The ministry described the operation as a large-scale Ukrainian attack involving fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, according to Reuters.
Ukraine had not officially commented on the strikes at the time of publication.
Kyiv has increasingly used long-range drones to target Russian oil facilities, logistics hubs and military infrastructure in an effort to disrupt Moscow’s war effort far from the front lines.
The latest exchange came as both sides continued near-daily missile and drone attacks, underscoring the intensifying aerial dimension of the conflict despite intermittent diplomatic efforts to seek a negotiated settlement.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a major escalation of a conflict that began in 2014 following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Since then, the war has become Europe’s largest armed conflict since World War II. Both Russia and Ukraine have expanded the use of drones, missiles and long-range strikes against military and strategic infrastructure.
Despite several rounds of negotiations and prisoner exchanges, the conflict remains unresolved and aerial attacks have intensified in recent months.
