Ukrainian drones shot down near Moscow as Russia attacks Kyiv, official claims
Editor's Note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
Russian air defense units intercepted en route to Moscow overnight on May 25, according to Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
Sobyanin's claims came as Russia launched a large-scale aerial attack against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for the second night in a row.
Six drones were shot down as they flew towards Moscow, Sobyanin reported. Emergency workers were dispatched to the scene. No casualties or damage have been reported at the time of publication.
The Kyiv Independent could not verify Sobyanin's claims. Ukraine rarely comments on reports of drone strikes on Russian soil.
Amid the reported attack, restrictions were introduced at Moscow's Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports, as well as Russia's Kaluga airport, according to the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya).
As Russia's war drags on and the Kremlin has openly said it opposes a ceasefire, Ukraine has stepped up its drone attacks on Russian soil. In the past week, Russia has claimed that mass Ukrainian drone strikes targeted Moscow and other regions several nights in a row.
Ukraine regularly attacks Russian military infrustructure with drones. The recent surge in drone strikes aims to disrupt airport operations, overwhelm air defenses, and make the war visible to the Russian public.
Read also: Ukraine brings home 307 POWs in 2nd phase of major prisoner swap with Russia
We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Ukraine Got a Major Battle Victory. Trump Is Not Happy.
Ukraine's drone strikes deep into Russia delivered a humiliating blow to Moscow last weekend. Kyiv's defenders celebrated the attack as a triumph of modern warfare and a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the extraordinary operation got a different response inside the White House: anger. Donald Trump has openly vented in recent weeks about Putin's unwillingness to end the war. But since Sunday's attack, which hit a series of Russian military airfields, the president has privately expressed frustration that the strike could escalate the conflict, according to three administration officials and an outside adviser to the White House. (They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.) These sources told me that the drone strike has reignited the president's long-held displeasure with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and prompted a new debate in the White House about whether the United States should abandon Ukraine. Throughout the war, Trump has deemed Zelensky a 'bad guy' and a 'hothead,' the outside adviser said—someone who could be pushing the globe toward World War III. Trump privately echoed a right-wing talking point this week by criticizing Zelensky for supposedly showboating after the drone attacks; according to the adviser, Trump was impressed with the audacity of the strikes but believes that Zelensky's focus should have been on Ukraine-Russia negotiations in Istanbul. Trump spoke with Putin yesterday, and, in a readout of the call on Truth Social, the U.S. president relayed the Kremlin's plans to strike back against Ukraine. 'We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,' Trump wrote. 'It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.' Trump did not say whether he had warned Putin against retaliating, and two of the administration officials told me that he has not decided on his next steps. Officials have presented him with options that include sanctioning Russia and reducing American aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Trump told aides this week that he does not believe a summit with him, Zelensky, and Putin—which he once hoped would be a way to bring the war to a close—will happen any time soon, one of the administration officials told me. Trump, who on the campaign trail last year vowed to end the war within his first 24 hours in office, made a renewed push for a peace deal last month. While Zelensky agreed to an immediate cease-fire, Putin rejected the offer and ratcheted up his bombing of Ukrainian cities. That led Trump to threaten to walk away from peace talks, and to flash some rare ire at Putin. The president had hoped that some progress would be made in this week's talks in Turkey, but the meeting was overshadowed by the drone strikes and went nowhere. The White House has said that the U.S. was not told in advance about the surprise attack, which was carried out by drones hidden across five of Russia's time zones that hit nuclear-capable bombers and inflicted billions of dollars in damage, according to a preliminary estimate from the White House. Steve Bannon and other influential MAGA voices have berated Ukraine for the attack and are attempting to push Washington further from Kyiv. On his podcast this week, Bannon blamed Ukraine for, in his view, sabotaging peace talks while potentially provoking a massive response from Russia. 'Zelensky didn't give the president of the United States a heads-up to say he's going to do a deep strike into strategic forces of Russia, which is going up the escalatory ladder as quickly as you can, on the day before your meeting in Turkey?' Bannon said. 'On the eve of peace talks or cease-fire talks, he takes the Japanese role in Pearl Harbor—the sneak attack.' Bannon has conveyed similar messages to senior West Wing advisers, a fourth administration official told me. Keith Kellogg, Trump's Ukraine envoy, warned on Fox News that 'the risk levels are going way up' because the drones struck part of Russia's 'national survival system'—its nuclear program—potentially pushing Moscow to retaliate in significant ways. Trump has not increased aid to Ukraine since taking office again in January, and he has yet to endorse a bipartisan Senate push, led by his ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to impose harsh economic penalties against Russia and countries that do business with it. There have been other recent signs that the White House is distancing itself from Ukraine, too. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not attend a meeting of 50 defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In the past, the meeting has been an important venue for coordinating military aid for Ukraine. Hegseth was the first U.S. defense secretary to skip the event in three years. The Pentagon cited scheduling issues for his absence. When I asked a White House spokesperson for comment about the drone strikes, she pointed me to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's briefing-room remarks on Tuesday, when Leavitt said that Trump 'wants this war to end at the negotiating table, and he has made that clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.' In public remarks about the strikes, Putin downplayed the chances of a cease-fire, asking, 'Who has negotiations with terrorists?' But Zelensky told reporters that the operation over the weekend, code-named Spider's Web, would not have been carried out if Putin had agreed to a U.S.-proposed truce. 'If there had been a cease-fire, would the operation have taken place?' Zelensky asked. 'No.' Exasperated with the conflict, Trump continues to muse about walking away from any sort of diplomatic solution. In his Truth Social post about his call with Putin, the president seemed eager to change the subject to focus on ending a different international crisis. 'We also discussed Iran,' Trump wrote about ongoing talks regarding Tehran's nuclear ambitions. 'President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion.'


Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Swiss Arms Chief Seeks Closer European Ties for Defense Race
Switzerland's most senior arms procurement official is seeking closer collaboration with European neighbors, as global demand for weapons surges and the nation's own defense industry falters. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and concern over US President Donald Trump's commitment to NATO's mutual defense clause is forcing Europe to rearm, pushing weapons firms to their capacity limits. That's making it more challenging for small countries like Switzerland to place orders, said Urs Loher, director of Armasuisse, the government agency responsible for Swiss army procurement.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Greenpeace activists charged with theft of Macron waxwork
Two Greenpeace activists who removed French President Emmanuel Macron's waxwork from a Paris museum to stage anti-Russia protests were on Thursday charged with aggravated theft, their lawyer said. The pair have now been released, but their lawyer, Marie Dose, said the activists, a man and a woman, spent three nights in a cell in "absolutely appalling conditions". "I found out this morning that I was going to be charged," one of the charged activists, who did not wish to be named, told AFP. "I find it a bit much, all this for exercising my freedom of expression in France." On Monday, several activists stole a 40,000-euro statue of Macron from the Grevin Museum and placed it in front of the Russian embassy. On Tuesday they placed Macron's double outside the headquarters of French electricity giant EDF to protest France's economic ties with Russia. They stood the statue on its feet and put next to it a sign reading "Putin-Macron radioactive allies". The waxwork, estimated to be worth 40,000 euros ($45,500), was handed over to police on Tuesday night. The pair were detained on Monday. On Thursday they were brought before an investigating judge and charged as part of a judicial inquiry into "the theft of a cultural object on display", the Paris prosecutor's office told AFP. Jean-Francois Julliard, head of Greenpeace France, said that the detained pair were people who drove a truck during the protest in front of the Russian embassy, and not those who "borrowed" the statue from the museum. - 'Tool to deter activists' - The activists' lawyer condemned authorities for detaining and later charging them. "I don't understand this decision to open a judicial investigation, as the Grevin Museum clearly stated that there was no damage," said Dose. "Increasingly, the justice system is becoming a tool to deter activists from exercising their freedom of expression and opinion," she added. The Grevin Museum filed a complaint on Monday but subsequently took the matter in good humour. "The figures can only be viewed on site," it said on its Instagram feed. Speaking earlier, Dose denounced the detention as "completely disproportionate", saying they had spent three nights in a cell. The lawyer condemned the "deplorable" conditions in which the two activists were being held, "attached to benches for hours and dragged from police station to police station". One activist spent the night without a blanket and was unable to lie down because her cell was too small, the lawyer said. "The other had to sleep on the floor because there were too many people in the cell," she added. The lawyer argued that "no harm resulted from the non-violent action", insisting that "all offences" ceased to exist once the statue has been returned to the museum. The activists managed to slip out through an emergency exit of the museum by posing as maintenance workers. France has been one of the most vocal supporters of Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Macron has taken the lead in seeking to forge a coordinated European response to defending Ukraine, after US President Donald Trump shocked the world by directly negotiating with Russia. But Greenpeace and other activists say that French companies continue to do business with Moscow despite multiple rounds of sanctions slapped against Russia after the start of the invasion. gd-nal-abe-jul-as/sjw/giv