Russia says it intercepted more than 150 Ukrainian drones in ‘massive’ raid

Russia says it has stopped a “massive” Ukrainian air attack by downing at least 158 drones in 15 regions, including two over Russia’s capital Moscow.

The Russian defence ministry on Sunday said 46 of the drones were shot over the Kursk region, where Ukraine has sent its forces in recent weeks in the largest incursion on Russian soil since World War II.

A further 34 drones were shot down over the Bryansk region, 28 over the Voronezh region, and 14 over the Belgorod region – all of which border Ukraine, the ministry said, adding that a total of 15 Russian regions were hit.

Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Sunday said falling debris from one of the two drones shot down over the city caused a fire at an oil refinery.

Also in Russia, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said nine people were wounded in Ukrainian aerial missile attacks in the Russian border region. These included eight in the regional capital, also called Belgorod.

Hours after the barrage of Ukrainian drone attacks, Russian forces on Sunday carried out another wave of strikes on Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv.

Ukrainian officials on Sunday said at least 10 Russian missiles hit several locations in Kharkiv, including a shopping mall, injuring at least 44 people, including five children.

Rescue workers and volunteers carried injured civilians to ambulances in the city after missiles struck the mall and an events hall.

Shattered glass and debris were strewn across the ground and people fled to a metro station for safety.

‘Ukraine uses its own equipment’

Ukrainian drone strikes have brought the fight far from the front line into the heart of Russia.

“It is entirely justified for Ukrainians to respond to Russian terror by any means necessary to stop it,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook.

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals to slow down the Kremlin’s assault.

Solomiya Khoma of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center said Kyiv’s recent extended attacks on Russian territory can be linked to the fact that it has used its own unmanned aerial equipment since the beginning of the year.

“Ukraine will continue to use its own capabilities as well as all its missiles and drones to continue to do that,” she told Al Jazeera from Kyiv.

“Until the end of this year, we will also see a build-up of such strikes on Russian territories,” she said, adding that the strikes seem to be hitting targets and impacting Russian capabilities.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that it had taken control of the towns of Pivnichne and Vyimka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region as sides keep militarily pushing each other.

The claim could not be independently verified.

The intensity in fighting comes at a critical juncture in the two-and-a-half-year conflict, with Russia pressing an offensive in eastern Ukraine while trying to expel Ukrainian forces that broke through its western border in a surprise incursion on August 6.

Russia last week pounded Ukraine with its heaviest air strikes of the war, hitting energy facilities, part of a campaign of drone and missile barrages that have killed thousands of civilians and troops since the conflict began in February 2022.

Ukraine has been pressing the United States and other allies for permission to use more powerful Western-supplied weapons to inflict greater damage inside Russia and impair Moscow’s abilities to attack Ukraine.