Russia reportedly said Thursday that it had downed 122 Ukrainian drones in a sweeping overnight assault that reached Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other parts of the country — a striking escalation just days after President Donald Trump reportedly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on whether Kyiv could strike deep inside Russian territory.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported the drones were intercepted as tensions between the two nations increasingly play out in the skies.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said three drones targeting the capital were destroyed, while authorities in St. Petersburg also reported drone activity. The city’s main airport briefly canceled flights overnight, though no specific threat was publicly cited.
The Ukrainian government declined to comment on the latest strikes, and while Ukrainian drones have increased in frequency, the scale of Russian attacks continues to vastly overshadow those launched by Kyiv.
Last week, Russia unleashed its largest aerial barrage of the war to date — more than 700 drones and missiles fired across Ukraine in a single night.
Thursday’s drone campaign marked one of the boldest by Ukraine in recent memory, coming at a time when Trump is applying public and diplomatic pressure on both sides to reach a resolution to the war, now in its fourth year.
According to a senior Ukrainian official, during a recent call with Zelensky, Trump asked whether Kyiv was capable of hitting Moscow and St. Petersburg. The White House, seeking to clarify the report, insisted Trump was “merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing.”
While both Moscow and Kyiv continue their air campaigns, civilians are paying the price.
In Russia’s Voronezh region, near the Ukrainian border, three children were reportedly injured after debris from a downed drone struck a residential building. Smolensk, west of Moscow, also reported injuries from falling debris.
Meanwhile, Russian strikes on Ukraine continue unabated. In the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, officials said one person was killed and five injured in a drone attack Tuesday.
In a more pointed development, Russian drones have begun targeting Western-linked entities: the Polish Embassy’s consular section in Kyiv was hit earlier this month, and this week, a factory in central Ukraine owned by a Polish businessman was struck, injuring several workers.
Zelensky, speaking to the New York Post, revealed that he and Trump are discussing a “megadeal” under which the U.S. would buy battlefield-tested Ukrainian drones in exchange for Kyiv agreeing to purchase American weaponry — a deal Zelensky said would further both nations’ development of aerial technology.
Ukraine now boasts dozens of drone manufacturing plants producing millions of unmanned aircraft annually.
As diplomacy stalls, both sides have continued partial implementation of earlier agreements reached during spring talks in Istanbul.
On Thursday, Vladimir Medinsky, a senior aide to President Vladimir Putin, said Russia returned the bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukraine, in turn, returned the remains of 19 Russian troops. A Ukrainian official said it cannot recover more bodies because they remain in active combat zones.
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