Four people, including an Indian worker, were killed in overnight Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia in what local officials described as the largest attack on the Moscow region in over a year, Sky News reported via Ada Derana on Sunday (17).
Three of the deaths occurred in the Moscow region — the area surrounding but not including the capital city — with one in the Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border. Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman was killed when a home was hit in Khimki, north of the capital, and two men died in the village of Pogorelki in the Mytishchi district, where several residential high-rises and infrastructure facilities were damaged.
The Indian embassy in Moscow confirmed that an Indian worker was among the dead and three other Indian nationals were injured.
A total of 81 drones headed for Moscow since midnight were shot down by air defences, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Sobyanin said 12 people were injured, mostly near the entrance to Moscow’s oil refinery, and three houses were damaged, though refinery operations were not affected.
Ukraine’s security service SBU said the military hit an oil refinery and two oil-pumping stations in the Moscow region, framing the strikes as targeting “defence-industry facilities, military infrastructure and oil logistics sites.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attacks “entirely justified.”
Russia’s defence ministry reported 556 drones downed nationally overnight. Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia attacked with 287 drones, 279 of which were shot down or jammed. Eight people were injured and residential buildings damaged in central Dnipropetrovsk.
The escalation comes despite recent Trump-brokered diplomatic moves that briefly raised hopes of a wider Russia–Ukraine pause.
