Mass Ukraine Drone Barrage Kills 3 in Moscow Region

By AFP May 17, 2026

A huge wave of more than 500 Ukrainian drones attacked Russia overnight, killing three people in the Moscow region, authorities said on Sunday.

Air defenses shot down 556 drones in more than a dozen regions, including Moscow, Russia's Defense Ministry said, in one of the largest Ukrainian barrages of the ongoing conflict so far.

These interceptions — far above the usually reported few dozen — took place across 14 Russian regions, as well as the annexed Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas, the ministry added, with the region around the capital among the worst-hit.

"A woman was killed as a result of a UAV hitting a private house. One more person is trapped under rubble," the Moscow region's Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram, adding that the early morning attack also claimed the lives of two men.

"Since three o'clock in the morning, air defense forces have been repelling a large-scale UAV attack on the capital region," he said, adding four people were wounded and infrastructure facilities had been targeted.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had vowed to launch more retaliatory strikes on Friday, a day after a Russian attack on Kyiv killed 24 people and injured around 50 more.

Within Russia's capital, local authorities reported that air defense systems had intercepted more than 80 drones overnight, wounding 12 people.

"Minor damage has been recorded at the sites where debris fell," Mayor Sergei Sobyanin posted on Telegram.

One of the strikes wounded construction workers at a job site near an oil and gas refinery, Sobyanin said.

"Refinery production has not been disrupted. Three residential buildings were damaged," he added.

While the Moscow region is often subjected to drone attacks, the city of Moscow, located around 400 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, is less frequently targeted.

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.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said it had intercepted 279 Russian drones out of a total of 287 launched.

'Entirely justified'

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.

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 U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in late February.

After the expiration of a three-day truce on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, which both sides accused the other of violating, Moscow and Kyiv have returned to trading attacks.

In response to daily bombardments by the Russian military for more than four years, Ukraine has regularly struck within Russia.

In the wake of Moscow's latest attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Zelensky insisted that Kyiv's strategy of targeting military and energy sites within Russia was "entirely justified."

Read more about: Ukraine war , Moscow region , Moscow

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