Ukrainian attack on Russian territory, more than 200 drones intercepted

Russia announced today that it shot down 221 Ukrainian drones overnight in one of the heaviest attacks by the Ukrainian military in the three and a half years of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The attack occurred on the eve of the start of large-scale Russian-Belarusian military exercises taking place near Minsk.

Of the drones that air defenses "intercepted and shot down," nine were in the Moscow region and 28 in the St. Petersburg region, the country's second-largest city, the Defense Ministry said via Telegram.

In the northwestern region of St. Petersburg, far from the front and close to the Baltic countries and Finland, a ship was set on fire in the port of Primorsk on the Baltic Sea in an attack, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said.

The governor added via Telegram that the fire has been contained and there is no risk of an oil leak.

While the Russian military has been bombing Ukraine daily since it invaded the country in February 2022, Kiev, for its part, has been sending drones towards Russia during the night.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has concentrated its strikes on oil infrastructure, a key sector of the Russian economy that the West wants to sanction.

The attacks were largely limited to a few dozen drones, significantly fewer than the more than 200 intercepted on Thursday night.

Ukraine's massive drone attack came two days after Russian drones entered the airspace of NATO member Poland, causing alarm among its European allies.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, also NATO members and neighbors of Belarus, have beefed up security and restricted air traffic ahead of the start of joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises near Minsk today. The military exercises are called Zapad-2025, referring to the fact that they are taking place in the west of the Russian-Belarusian alliance. They are the first exercises since the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022. The 2021 exercises mobilized about 200.000 Russian troops several months before the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.