Moscow says air defenses down more than 60 Ukrainian drones

Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defenses shot down more than 60 Ukrainian drones on approach to Moscow overnight, and he did not report any injuries. He began posting updates around 4 a.m. as the attack unfolded, saying 56 drones had already been destroyed before the toll climbed higher.

The strike fit a pattern that has sharpened over the past two weeks. On June 22, Sobyanin said nearly 60 drones were intercepted heading for Moscow, prompting brief flight suspensions at airports in the capital region before operations resumed. A week earlier, Russian officials called another assault the largest drone attack on Moscow since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in February 2022, saying nearly 200 drones were shot down on approach and several reached the Moscow Refinery in the Kapotnya district.

Air travel has become one of the clearest signs of the pressure. Moscow’s four major airports, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky, have repeatedly faced temporary restrictions during drone attacks, with Domodedovo and Zhukovsky closed during the June 30 strike. The disruptions have turned repeated air defense alerts into a visible test of Moscow’s ability to keep the capital functioning while the war reaches deeper into Russian airspace.

The toll has not been limited to infrastructure scares. In a separate Moscow region incident, a drone crash in Yegoryevsk killed a six-month-old child and injured other family members, underscoring how the campaign has spilled beyond the capital’s skyline into nearby communities. Sobyanin has said Russian forces intercepted 1,134 Ukrainian drones so far in 2026, compared with 734 in all of 2025, a surge that shows how quickly the tempo of attacks on Moscow has accelerated.