One of Moscow's biggest drone raids in more than a year has killed at least three people and wounded dozens, making a near-term restart of peace talks unlikely. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 12 people were wounded in the capital and that Russian defences shot down 81 drones bound for the city, while the Russian Defence Ministry said 556 drones were destroyed across Russian territory and adjacent seas. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov linked a pause in negotiations to Ukrainian strikes on civilian targets inside Russia, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the raids, calling them "entirely justified."

The Kremlin has framed this weekend's mass drone raid as a direct obstacle to restarting negotiations. That's the read from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who tied the interruption in talks to what he described as continued Ukrainian strikes on civilian targets inside Russia.

What happened over Moscow and the regions

Russian authorities reported intense drone activity overnight and across the weekend. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at least 12 people were wounded in the capital, mostly near the entrance to an oil refinery. Sobyanin added that Russian defences shot down 81 drones headed for Moscow.

At a national level, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces destroyed 556 drones over Russia, the occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Azov and Black Seas. Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport said debris fell on its grounds, but that it didn't cause damage or disrupt flights.

Regional officials reported fatalities outside the city. Andrei Vorobyev, governor of the Moscow region, said a woman was killed when a drone struck her home in Khimki. Vorobyev also said two men died in the village of Pogorelki north of the capital.

Mastheads

Local authorities reported a man killed when a drone struck a truck in the Belgorod region.

The Indian Embassy in Moscow said an Indian worker died in a drone strike in the Moscow region and that three other Indian nationals were hospitalised. It was not immediately clear whether that fatality was included in the regional totals reported by Russian officials.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly confirmed that Ukrainian forces carried out strikes on Russian territory. Zelenskyy described those raids as "entirely justified." The Kremlin took the strikes as evidence that the security and diplomatic environment needed to pause negotiations.

Fighting and context beyond the headlines

The weekend raids were not one-sided. Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian drone strikes wounded eight people in Ukraine overnight and that residential areas were hit in cities such as Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region, where at least one person was killed by Russian shelling.

Since drones first reached central Moscow in May 2023, analyses tracking the campaign say Ukraine's long-range effort has shifted. What began as symbolic overflights has grown into coordinated mass attacks aimed at refineries, military-linked industry and logistics hubs. Russian air defences have repeatedly intercepted waves of uncrewed aerial vehicles, but analysts and Russian officials have noted a shift in 2024 and 2025 toward larger, more sustained strikes on strategic infrastructure.

That evolution is feeding changes across allied militaries too. NATO exercises on the alliance’s eastern flank have started to incorporate remote systems tested in Ukraine. Training in Latvia has included work with uncrewed ground vehicles and advanced drone systems, demonstrating how battlefield-tested technologies are influencing preparedness and deployment on European soil.

The diplomatic framing has also drawn outside comment from U.S. President Donald Trump, who had said a Russian missile strike on a Kyiv apartment building that killed 24 people, including three children, had set back peace efforts. Kremlin officials urged attention to Ukrainian strikes on civilian targets in Russia as they responded to those remarks.

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The Kremlin says it expects talks to resume but gave no timetable. The next formal step will be whether Moscow sets a date to reopen negotiations.

This article was created with AI assistance.