Russia says it downed 1,198 Ukrainian drones overnight; four killed in Volgograd region

Drone claims and deaths in Russia

Russia's defence ministry said it had destroyed 1,198 Ukrainian drones during the night, spread over more than 15 Russian regions. French-language reports put the number of regions at about twenty and describe the attack as one of the largest on Russia since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The ministry described the interception in its statement, saying:

“aerial defence systems intercepted and destroyed 1,198 Ukrainian drones”

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the Max messenger that 467 drones had reached the Moscow region overnight, and that most of them were neutralised by Russian defences. Those figures cover different areas, since the ministry's total spans the wider set of regions while Sobyanin's count is limited to Moscow. In Volgograd region, Governor Andrei Botcharov said four people were killed, all of them employees of a local industrial zone that includes an oil refinery and a chemical plant. He added in a Telegram statement that two other workers from the same zone were wounded and taken to hospital.

Strikes across Ukraine

In Odesa, regional governor Oleg Kiper said on Telegram that two people were killed and five wounded overnight, with private houses and cars damaged. Acting Zaporizhzhia governor Mykhailo Semikin said a Russian attack on the city killed a 17-year-old boy. Ukrainian authorities said another night of Russian attacks had set a hospital ablaze and killed at least three people. In Kyiv, a Russian attack damaged a hospital and triggered a fire that forced people to seek shelter, and one person was wounded. In Rivne, a city in the northwest far from the front line, a Russian strike damaged a pre-school and wounded six people, including two children.

Volgograd region4

Odesa2

Zaporizhzhia1

Volgograd region

4 people

Odesa

2 people

Zaporizhzhia

1 people

Data from the article text

Energy war on both sides

Ukraine has stepped up its strikes on Russian energy sites over the last year and a half. The aim, as the reports frame it, is to reduce Moscow's income and weaken its capacity to fund the war it launched in February 2022. Russia is heavily targeting Ukraine's power grid with aerial barrages, leaving residents across the country without electricity as temperatures fall. Both sides have escalated long-range strikes over several months, with more attacks hitting civilian sites such as factories, refineries, warehouses, port infrastructure and ships, and a growing number of civilian casualties.

Talks in Moscow and Dublin

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent hours in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on 12 November, before travelling to Dublin to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The talks are part of intense US-led diplomacy to end a war approaching its fifth year, and the drone attacks came the day after them. Separately, Russia's Investigative Committee, which handles serious crimes, said on 13 November that it had opened an investigation into the explosion of a car in Moscow. Russian media reported that the car belonged to an exiled Ukrainian political aide, a onetime spokesman for former Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov.