Following the largest daytime drone attack since the start of the war, Russian forces pressed on through the night with the launch of over 70 missiles and 400 drones.

The attack had been anticipated both by Ukrainian intelligence and by the main Ukrainian monitoring channels, and opened with a first salvo of 4 ISKANDER-M ballistic missiles striking the city of Kremenchuk (Poltava Oblast), with 2 of them targeting the refinery, around midnight Italian time.

Roughly half an hour later, the launches of ISKANDER-K cruise missiles (ground-launched) began, with a couple of missiles hitting their targets at Kozyn, in the Kyiv Oblast (about 20 km south of the capital).

The salvos continued throughout the night, with 4 Tu-95 strategic bombers launching 32 Kh-101 cruise missiles at around 01:00, which reached the capital roughly 2 hours later. In parallel, several hundred GERAN and GERBERA drones were launched against Kyiv (with multiple impacts starting at 01:45 Italian time) and other areas of the country.

The capital itself was the target of a massive combined attack with ISKANDER-M ballistic missiles, air-launched Kh-101 cruise missiles and ground-based ISKANDER-K, plus hundreds of drones. Several missiles were intercepted by the PATRIOT systems deployed in defence of the capital, but numerous impacts were recorded, at least fifteen of which from missiles. Finally, in the early hours of this morning, a pair of ISKANDER-M ballistic missiles struck the eastern outskirts of Kyiv. Among the targets hit in Kyiv and its surroundings are an industrial shed, a large warehouse, several residential buildings and a number of still unidentified objectives on the eastern and south-western outskirts of the capital and at Kozyn.

In total, according to figures provided by the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russians launched 35 Kh-101 cruise missiles (29 shot down) and 18 ballistic missiles including ISKANDER-M and S-300/400 (by our own calculations, the figure is actually 22–23) fired in surface-to-surface mode (12 shot down). In addition, 3 KINZHAL aero-ballistic missiles reportedly struck the Starokostyantyniv air base (Khmelnytsky Oblast) in the afternoon. To these must be added 7 ISKANDER-K cruise missiles not listed by the Kyiv authorities.

As for drones, over 1,400 were unleashed by Moscow against Ukraine in 24 hours (1,300 shot down or intercepted according to the Ukrainian Air Force), of which around 900 are estimated to have been kamikaze drones, with the remaining 500 made up of decoy drones.

After the massive daytime drone attackthat struck across the country, and particularly its western regions, Moscow's forces therefore carried out a large overnight strike combining further drones with ballistic and cruise missiles, and — exploiting the exhausted Ukrainian air defences that had been under pressure all day — managed to hit numerous targets across the country. Some Ukrainian sources report that, in last night's operations, air defences proved less effective than usual against cruise missiles, with around ten impacts recorded in the Kyiv Oblast.

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