Ukraine carried out one of its largest-ever drone offensives against Russia overnight on Saturday, sending nearly 600 drones across 14 regions and killing at least four people, including three in the Moscow area. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strikes, calling them "entirely justified" and a direct response to a week of intense Russian bombardment that he said killed more than 50 Ukrainians and wounded hundreds more. "Our responses to Russia's prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified," Zelenskyy said, adding that the strikes were "clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war."

In the Moscow region — which surrounds but does not include the Russian capital itself — a woman was killed when a drone struck her home in Khimki, a city just northwest of Moscow, while two men died in the village of Pogorelki, roughly six miles north of the capital. A fourth person was killed in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, when a drone hit a truck. India's embassy in Moscow confirmed one Indian national was among the dead. Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, reported that 12 people were wounded in the capital, mostly near the entrance to an oil refinery, though he said refinery operations were not disrupted. Debris from intercepted drones also fell inside the perimeter of Sheremetyevo, Russia's largest airport, without causing damage or affecting flights. Ukraine's security service said an oil refinery and two pumping stations near Moscow were struck, stating the attacks "reduce the enemy's ability to continue its war."

Russian air defences claimed to have shot down 556 drones overnight across 14 regions, with more than 1,000 intercepted over the full 24-hour period, according to the defence ministry. Zelenskyy noted that the drones flew more than 500 kilometres from Ukrainian territory and were "overcoming" Russian air defence systems concentrated around Moscow. The commander of Ukraine's drone forces declared that Moscow was "no longer an unreachable target." Ukraine has scaled up drone production significantly, and has signed agreements with countries including Germany and the Netherlands for joint manufacturing.

The strikes came in the wake of a brief, largely unobserved ceasefire that Russia had called around the May 9 Victory Day parade — an annual commemoration of the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. After the truce collapsed, Russia launched one of its heaviest assaults of the war, firing more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles at Ukrainian cities over three consecutive days. A cruise missile struck a nine-storey apartment building in Kyiv on Thursday, killing 24 people including three children. Russia also attacked Ukraine overnight into Sunday with 287 drones, wounding eight people.

Analysts say the Ukrainian strike is significant both militarily and psychologically. Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank, said the attack demonstrated that Ukraine retains "the capacity to strike at very significant scale at or around the Russian capital," bringing the war home to Moscow residents in a way the Kremlin will find deeply unwelcome. He cautioned, however, that even this escalation was unlikely to push Russia toward meaningful peace negotiations in the near term, citing the Kremlin's ongoing battlefield ambitions and tightening grip on domestic information. Diplomatic efforts remain stalled, with Russia holding maximalist territorial demands and broader international attention focused elsewhere.