Ukraine launches ~600 drones across 14 regions of Russia, killing four near Moscow

Russian authorities said Ukraine launched nearly 600 drones overnight into 17 May across 14 Russian regions, the annexed Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas, in what Russian state agency Tass described as the largest attack on Moscow in more than a year. Three people were killed in the Moscow region and one in Belgorod, the Russian defence ministry said, with the area around the capital among the worst-hit; the ministry claimed 556 drones had been shot down overnight and 30 more neutralised after dawn.

Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman had been killed when a home was struck in Khimki, north of Moscow, with rescuers still searching the debris for another person. Two men were killed in the village of Pogorelki, six miles north of the capital, when drone debris fell on a construction site, and several residential high-rises and "infrastructure facilities" were damaged. Vorobyov said four people had been wounded in the region. India's embassy in Moscow said a male Indian citizen was killed and three others injured. In the capital itself, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences intercepted more than 80 drones; 12 people were wounded when drones hit an entrance to the city's oil refinery, damaging three nearby houses, though Sobyanin said refinery production had not been disrupted. Sheremetyevo, Russia's busiest airport, reported drone wreckage on its territory but no damage to passenger services.

Ukraine's SBU security service and the General Staff named the targets struck around Moscow: the "Angstrem" plant in Zelenograd, which produces high-technology microchips, microelectronics, optical systems and robotics for the Russian military and precision weapons, and the "Solnechnogorskaya" pumping station, a critical node on the petroleum-product ring pipeline around Moscow used for gasoline and diesel including supplies to the Russian armed forces; fires were reported at both. The General Staff said the strikes used Ukrainian-made systems — RS-1 "Bars", FP-1 "Firepoint" and BARS-SM "Gladiator" — and credited the 412th Separate Unmanned Systems Brigade, the 107th Rocket Artillery Brigade from Kremenchuk, the 19th Missile Brigade "Saint Barbara" and the 1st Separate Centre of Unmanned Systems.

In occupied Crimea, the SBU said air defence systems at the Belbek military airfield were struck, with separate Ukrainian reporting specifying damage to a Pantsir-S2 system, an S-400 radar hangar and UAV control stations. The General Staff also listed strikes on a Russian command post near Bunhe in Donetsk Oblast; UAV command posts at Dvorichna (Kharkiv), Zavitne (Kherson) and Udachne (Donetsk); and Russian troop concentrations near Myrne (Donetsk), Krasnohirske (Zaporizhzhia), Volfynske (Russia's Kursk Oblast) and two more around Novoekonomichne (Donetsk).

Zelensky said the drones had flown more than 500 km (310 miles) from Ukrainian territory and that Kyiv was "overcoming" the Russian air defence concentration around Moscow. "Our responses to Russia's prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified," he said, adding that the strikes showed Kyiv was "clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war".

The exchange is the latest turn in a sustained strike–counterstrike pattern since a three-day truce ended on Tuesday — both sides accusing the other of violating it. Russia launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles in waves across Ukraine on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Ukrainian officials said; a cruise missile hit a nine-storey Kyiv apartment block on Thursday, killing 24 people including three children. Ukraine's air force said it had intercepted 279 of 287 Russian drones launched overnight Saturday–Sunday, with eight direct hits at seven locations, and reported renewed Russian drone and shelling attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk region that injured eight.

Ukrainian long-range drone reach has continued to extend over recent months; strikes have repeatedly hit Russian Urals targets — Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Perm and Cheboksary — at roughly 2,000 km from the Ukrainian border, exposing gaps in Russian air defence well beyond Moscow. Diplomatic efforts to end the four-year-old conflict remain at a standstill, with Kyiv unwilling to accept Moscow's maximalist demands for territory in the eastern Donbas region and US attention turned to the US–Israeli war against Iran. Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.