Ukraine has sent nearly 500 drones to the Russian capital.
Alexander Kazakov/via REUTERS
An unprecedented barrage of Ukrainian drones has struck Russia, grounding flights and damaging vital infrastructure, exacting the price for Vladimir Putin’s brutal war.
On one extraordinary night, a massive aerial assault involving nearly 500 long-range attack drones forced Moscow’s air authorities to completely freeze operations, stranding travelers and exposing serious vulnerabilities in the Kremlin’s air defense network.
The chaos in the skies from Tuesday to Wednesday coincided with devastating strikes further east, where a Ukrainian attack triggered a series of massive explosions in Balakovo, a major industrial center in the Saratov region along the Volga River.
NZNP oil terminal in Rostov-on-Don.
The strikes left one person dead, damaged several residential buildings and sparked widespread fires in an industrial area housing a key steel mill and state-owned mega data center complex.
According to some reports, 493 Ukrainian drones headed towards Moscow. The city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said Russian air defenses managed to shoot down 180 aircraft as they reached the perimeter of the capital.
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Despite these claims, the overwhelming volume of incoming targets triggered total panic in the region’s aviation hub. Moscow’s four international airports – Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky – were forced to completely suspend operations.
Vnukovo Airport remained completely paralyzed for more than eight hours, with stranded passengers kicked out of parked planes as sirens echoed across the tarmac.
The Defense Ministry in Moscow later claimed its forces had intercepted 902 Ukrainian drones in several Russian regions during the night campaign.
Beyond stopping aviation in the capital, the strikes inflicted serious physical damage on strategic Russian sites. In Balakovo, regional governor Roman Busargin confirmed the death of one resident and reported damage to several apartment buildings.
Open source intelligence imagery located one of the impacts approximately three kilometers from a major combined heat and power plant that serves as the main municipal heating provider for the regional center.
Putin arrives in Turkmenistan on Thursday. This plane was scheduled to land in St. Petersburg instead of Moscow on Friday.
Vladimir Smirnov/via REUTERS
Subsequent monitoring confirmed that other fires were raging in the Balakovo heavy industrial zone. Thermal data from NASA satellites has identified fires near a metallurgical plant and a massive billion-dollar data center complex operated by Russian financial giant Sberbank.
The strike marks the latest blow in a growing campaign against Russia’s digital infrastructure. Drones previously disabled a main Yandex data facility in Vladimir Oblast on October 11, knocking dozens of online services offline.
The incident follows an Oct. 8 attack on another major Yandex server in Ryazan Oblast, which sparked a massive fire and prompted the tech company to erase the physical coordinates of its servers in four Russian regions from online mapping services.
Smoke billows from Yandex’s Sasovo hub, one of the company’s five major data centers, after a fire following a drone strike forced the suspension of operations at the site.
SOCIAL MEDIA/SOCIAL MEDIA via REUTERS
Meanwhile, an oil terminal fire continues to burn out of control in Rostov-on-Don, highlighting Ukraine’s relentless targeting of energy facilities funding Moscow’s invasion.
The systematic targeting of Russian servers and energy centers comes as Moscow attempts to cripple Ukraine’s economic foundations with its own long-range strikes against digital infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the Kremlin had abandoned all remaining operational restrictions.
“He said there are no rules now,” Zelensky said, recounting intercepted communications from top Kremlin leaders.
The Kremlin systematically struck civilian targets, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, residential complexes and orphanages throughout the conflict.
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