Russia says 902 Ukrainian drones shot down overnight

Russia’s military said Wednesday that it had shot down 902 Ukrainian drones overnight, 180 of them near the capital Moscow.

“Over the past night… air defence systems destroyed 902 Ukrainian drones” across around 20 Russian regions and annexed Crimea, the defence ministry said in a statement.

According to the capital’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin, “180 drones were destroyed as they approached Moscow”.

He posted on Telegram that it was among the biggest drone attacks to have targeted Moscow in recent weeks.

The attacks disrupted operations at Moscow airports, with flights at Vnukovo Airport suspended for more than eight hours, according to airport authorities.

Russia’s defence ministry also said that it had carried out “a massive strike with high-precision weapons” overnight against “energy and communications infrastructure sites” in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the surrounding region as well as in the Kharkiv region, and that all the targets served military interests.