822 Ukrainian drones shot down, the largest attack of the year

The Ukrainian drone attack carried out overnight against Russia was the largest since the start of the year. Russian air defences say they intercepted and destroyed 822 unmanned aircraft. The figure comes from the Russian defence ministry and was reported by the Tass agency.

According to the same data, the drones were intercepted over the regions of Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Oryol, Rostov, Ryazan, Tambov and Tula, in the Moscow region, in the Krasnodar territory and in Crimea, as well as over the waters of the Azov and Black seas. Earlier reports had spoken of six hundred drones launched against Moscow alone.

Three people were killed and one injured in the Rostov region, in the south of the country. Governor Yury Slyusar said so, quoted by Tass: overnight three people were killed in an air attack on the region and another was taken to hospital. Also according to the governor, more than 150 drones were destroyed in the region near three cities and across nine districts.

A rapid escalation

The figures released by Moscow describe an intensification within a few days. The previous large-scale attack was on the night of 15 August, when Russian defences reported downing 598 Ukrainian drones. Before that, the highest total since the start of the year was recorded on 26 June, with 660 craft intercepted and destroyed, again according to Tass counts based on defence ministry data.

The tallies released by the parties to the conflict cannot be verified independently. The sequence given by Tass does show, however, that within two days the declared figure rose from just under six hundred to more than eight hundred, and that the targets were spread across a very wide area of Russian territory, from the border as far as the Nizhny Novgorod and Vladimir regions, more than seven hundred kilometres east of Moscow.