Moscow says it downed 61 Ukrainian drones in major overnight attack

Moscow said its air defenses shot down at least 61 Ukrainian drones over the capital region as one of the war’s largest overnight raids pushed emergency crews into debris sites and temporarily shut two Moscow-area airports. Russia’s Defense Ministry said 419 Ukrainian drones were intercepted across 18 regions and Russian-occupied Crimea, a scale that made the attack one of the biggest drone waves of the war.

Sergey Sobyanin began warning about incoming drones before midnight on Telegram and later said emergency services were working at sites where debris fell. Domodedovo and Zhukovsky were closed temporarily during the attack, adding to the transport disruption that has become a recurring feature of drone strikes aimed at the Moscow region.

The latest barrage also sharpened attention on strategically meaningful targets inside Russia. Ukrainian leaders have said their long-range drone campaign has focused on energy and military infrastructure, including repeated strikes on Moscow-area sites. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces hit the Dubna satellite communications center in the Moscow region for the second time. By function, a satellite communications center is a relay node for communications traffic, a role that can support military command links as well as civilian communications. Heavy smoke was visible at the site after the strike, but no public damage assessment has shown how much, if any, Russian operational capacity was reduced.

Dubna had already been hit in earlier waves. On June 22, 84 drones headed for Moscow were downed, and the satellite communications center was also reported struck then. The previous major Moscow attack came on June 18, when nearly 200 drones were launched at the capital. That wave set off a refinery fire in Kapotnya, injured 17 people in the Moscow region, and killed an eight-year-old girl.

The newest attack also brought fresh civilian casualties outside the capital. Moscow region Governor Andrey Vorobyov said a private home in Yegoryevsk caught fire after a drone fell on it, killing a six-month-old child and hospitalizing two other children and two adults. For Moscow, the repeated raids have become more than an air-defense statistic: they are disrupting airports, hitting infrastructure deeper inside Russia and forcing the Kremlin to manage a widening risk to civilians far from the front line.