Ukraine conducts large-scale drone strikes on Russia, killing 4 and wounding a dozen others

One of Ukraine’s largest drone strikes on Russia killed at least four people, including three near Moscow, and wounded a dozen others, local authorities said yesterday. Debris fell on Russia’s largest airport without causing damage.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the drone strikes, saying that they were “entirely justified.” Russia has repeatedly launched similar attacks on Ukraine’s capital and other cities during the war, and an expert said that the strikes appeared to be retaliation for recent Russian attacks on Kyiv.

Russian drone strikes on Ukraine overnight wounded eight people, Ukrainian authorities said.

In Ukraine’s strikes on Russia, a woman was killed after a drone hit her home in Khimki, a Russian city just northwest of Moscow, and two men died in the village of Pogorelki, which is 10 kilometers north of the capital, according to local Gov. Andrei Vorobyev.

Ukrainian drones had also damaged unspecified “infrastructure” and several high-rise buildings, Vorobyev said on social media.

One man was also killed after a drone struck a truck in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, according to local authorities.

In Moscow itself, at least 12 people were wounded in the nighttime strike, mostly near the entrance to the city’s oil refinery, mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported. Sobyanin reported that the “technology” of the refinery hadn’t been damaged.

Hours later, the Indian Embassy in Moscow reported that an Indian worker died in a drone strike “in (the) Moscow region,” while three other Indian nationals were hospitalized with injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the worker was one of the three people reported dead by Moscow region officials, or a further fatality.

Russia’s largest airport — Moscow’s Sheremetyevo — said that drone debris had fallen on its grounds without causing damage or affecting flights. SAMYA KULLAB, KYIV, MDT/AP