Ukraine launched a major nighttime attack on a dozen Russian regions, Russian-held Crimea, and the surrounding seas, Moscow's Defense Ministry said Friday, in what appeared to be one of Kyiv's biggest drone assaults since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion more than four years ago. Russian air defenses intercepted 660 Ukrainian drones, Russia's Defense Ministry said. The previous biggest Ukrainian attack over the past year, as Ukraine has accelerated its drone development, involved 556 drones on May 17.
In an effort to turn the tables on Russia's grinding war of attrition, Ukrainian long-range drones have been battering oil production and energy facilities behind the front line and deep inside Russia, the AP reports. The campaign has choked Russian fuel supplies and military deliveries, stalling Moscow's efforts on the battlefield, Western officials and analysts say, and has heaped pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- Initial damage reports from Russia after the overnight attack provided scant information. Russia's Defense Ministry usually doesn't say what was targeted in Ukraine's drone attacks, nor does it detail any damage. Russian independent online outlet Astra reported that a chemical plant and a hydroelectric plant in Novomoskovsk were attacked and caught fire.
- Ukraine's Security Service said it used drones to strike Russian navy ships and air defense radars in Kerch, an important port city in Crimea. The targets were two reconnaissance and minelaying ships, the Volga and the Vyatka, and the cargo-passenger ferry Petropavlovsk, the agency said, claiming that the strikes started a large fire.
- The attack came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X that he had ordered "a 40-day influence operation," believed to mean an escalation of attacks, aimed at "compelling (Russia) to end the war" after US peace efforts over the past year yielded no breakthrough. Last week, Zelensky described a major attack on Moscow as "long-range sanctions," saying, "We don't want this war and have never wanted it. But if Ukraine burns, your Moscow will burn too."
- In Ukraine, authorities said Friday that Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours had killed at least three people and wounded dozens of others.
- Despite the attacks, Russia and Ukraine exchanged prisoners of war, with 160 from each side returning home on Friday, officials said. Zelensky said the Ukrainians had been in captivity since 2022, the year Russia invaded.
- Russian hardliners have responded to the Ukrainian strikes with calls for Putin to abandon plans for peace talks and escalate the conflict, Reuters reports. Some have called for the destruction of Ukrainian cities and even the use of tactical nuclear weapons. "War means victory at any cost," tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev said last week. "Why are we not using nuclear weapons, which our forebears developed and stockpiled with the full might of the nation precisely for this purpose?"
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