More than 200 Ukrainian drones flew toward the Moscow region overnight into Thursday morning, and Sergey Sobyanin said most were stopped by air defenses before reaching the capital. For travelers using Moscow's four international airports, the immediate effect was temporary flight restrictions while the response was underway. Wildberries remains outside the story; the scale is the point.
Sergey Sobyanin and 9 a.m.
Sobyanin wrote on Telegram that "More than 200 drones were flying towards the Moscow region" from Wednesday evening until 9 a.m. local time on Thursday. He said ten drones were destroyed as they approached Moscow, a narrower number that shows how much of the attack was handled before the drones reached the city itself.
Russia's Defense Ministry gave a broader overnight count, saying its forces downed at least 375 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. That figure covers far more than Moscow, but it places the overnight wave in the wider pattern of pressure on Russia's air defenses.
Four Moscow airports
Rosaviatsiya put temporary flight restrictions in place at all four of Moscow's international airports overnight. The same agency also restricted Saratov airport, alongside airports in Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Samara, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl, Cherepovets and Gelendzhik. For passengers, the practical issue is movement through the system, not the drone count itself: departures, arrivals and connections can all be caught in the same restriction window.
In May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram that "Our responses to Russia's prolonging of the war and strikes on our cities and communities are completely fair" and that "The Moscow region has Russia's densest concentration of air defenses. But we are getting through." Those comments now read against a week in which Sobyanin said more than 1,200 Ukrainian drones were flying toward Moscow.
1,420 drones this year
As of Thursday, Sobyanin had reported 1,420 Ukrainian drones on approach to Moscow so far this year, including 191 shot down as they approached the city over the previous seven days. Across all of 2025, he had reported 734 drones near Moscow, a separate tally that shows how quickly the count has already moved this year.
The unresolved point is how many of the overnight drones reached Moscow or caused damage. Sobyanin's posts describe the approach and the interceptions, while the transport restrictions show the operational response that followed.
