Ukrainian Drones Strike Russian Regions Up to 2,000 Kilometers from Border

Ukrainian drones struck 14 central Russian regions, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea overnight on May 16. The attacks killed four people and injured about a dozen workers at a construction site near a refinery outside Moscow. Three deaths occurred in Moscow suburbs and one in the Belgorod region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X that Ukrainian forces overcame Russian air defenses more than 500 kilometers from the border.

Ukrainian drones have reached cities nearly 2,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border in recent months. Targets have included Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Cheboksary. On April 25, four aircraft were damaged at Chagol airfield in the Chelyabinsk region, about 1,700 kilometers from Ukraine.

A residential building in Yekaterinburg was also hit that day. On May 5, a facility operated by Vniir-Progress in Cheboksary was partly destroyed. Kyiv described the weapon as a Ukrainian Flamingo-type missile. On May 7, drone attacks forced an oil refinery in Perm to shut down.

“The distance from Ukraine's state border is over 500 km. The concentration of Russian air defense in the Moscow region is the highest. But we are overcoming it. Glory to Ukraine!”