Russian air defences shot down 347 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday (May 7, 2026), in what appeared to be a major attack after Moscow spurned Kyiv’s ceasefire earlier in the week and tension mounted over safety at Russia’s upcoming Victory Day celebrations.

Incoming drones were destroyed over 20 Russian regions, including Moscow, according to the Defence Ministry, in Ukraine’s second-biggest aerial attack since Russia’s all-out invasion more than four years ago. The largest was last March when it launched 389 drones.

The attack came ahead of Russia’s most important secular holiday, Victory Day, which marks the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Russian authorities have declared a unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine for Friday (May 8) and Saturday (May 9).

Ukraine had responded to that with its own suspension of hostilities from midnight on Tuesday (May 5). But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow disregarded the goodwill gesture and launched fresh attacks.

“Russia has not stopped any type of its military activity. Unfortunately, it has not stopped. Ukraine will act symmetrically,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in his regular evening video address on Wednesday (May 6).

He said on Thursday (May 7) on X that Russia’s attacks have been ceaseless, with drones, missiles, artillery shelling and glide bombs hitting civilian areas of Ukraine, including the power grid and rail network.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest, a drone strike wounded nine people, including three children, local officials said.

Tension has grown as Russia’s Victory Day celebrations approach and U.S.-led peace efforts gain no traction.

All mobile internet access and text messaging services will be shut down in the Russian capital on May 9, state media reported on Thursday (May 7), citing the country’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media.

Also, a traditional parade in Moscow won’t feature the usual tanks, missiles and other military equipment for the first time in nearly two decades.

Russian authorities say they are concerned about possible Ukrainian attacks, as Kyiv has expanded its long-range drone and missile capabilities.

The Russian Defense Ministry cited the “current operational situation” as a reason for excluding military equipment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday (May 7) that additional security measures were being taken due to the “rather complex operational situation”.

The measures being taken “are necessary to ensure the safety of citizens, which is an absolute priority,” Peskov told reporters.

The restrictions will include websites on the Russian government’s so-called “white list,” a group of state-approved online services that are kept available during the country’s increasingly common connectivity blackouts.

Home internet and Wi-Fi will be unaffected, officials said.

Ukraine’s air defence shot down 92 of the 102 drones Russia launched overnight, the military said.

Russia maintains a significant advantage in drone numbers, regularly deploying hundreds in a single attack.

A Ukrainian drone attack killed a man and wounded another in the resort city of Tuapse in southern Russia, regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev said on Monday (April 20, 2026).

This is the second assault on the seaport in a matter of days, with drone debris damaging windows in buildings across the city, including apartments, a primary school, kindergarten, museum and church, he added.

A Russian drone strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro hit a bus carrying mineworkers and killed at least a dozen people, Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday (February 1, 2026), hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the next round of peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations will take place on Wednesday (February 4, 2026) and Thursday (February 5, 2026).

The strike injured several more people and sparked a fire that was subsequently put out, according to the emergency services.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said it owned the bus and accused Russia of carrying out “a large-scale terrorist attack on DTEK mines in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” whose capital is Dnipro.

“The epicentre of one of the attacks was a company bus transporting miners from the enterprise after a shift in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” the company said in a Telegram post.

The strike came days after U.S. President Donald Trump said the Kremlin had agreed to temporarily halt the targeting of the Ukrainian capital and other cities, as the region suffers under freezing temperatures that have brought widespread hardship to Ukrainians.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal on Sunday (February 1, 2026) called the strike in Dnipro “a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers,” and said it occured near the Ternivska mine east of the city.

Hours earlier, Ukraine’s emergency services reported that Russian attack drones injured six people at a maternity hospital in Zaporizhzhia, southern Ukraine, on Sunday (February 1, 2026) morning.

Drones strike Ukrainian maternity hospital

Earlier on Sunday (February 1, 2026), Russian attack drones struck a maternity hospital in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian emergency service reported.

In a Telegram post, it said the strike wounded three women in the hospital in Zaporizhzhia, and also sparked a fire in the gynecology reception area that was later extinguished. Regional administration head Ivan Fedorov later said the number of injured had risen to six.

Two people were killed and dozens ‍more wounded in a mass Russian drone attack ​across Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ‌on Sunday (January 18, 2026), as U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators ​hashed out a post-war plan in the latest round of peace talks.

Moscow has stepped up a winter campaign of strikes on the Ukrainian energy system while also waging a battlefield offensive as Kyiv faces U.S. pressure to ​secure peace in the nearly four-year-old war.

Mr. Zelenskyy ⁠said the Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi and Odesa regions were targeted in an attack that included more than ​200 drones. The ⁠military said 30 strikes had been recorded across 15 locations.

One person was killed in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, said mayor Ihor Terekhov, ‌who in recent days has reported significant ‌damage to local energy facilities as a result of Russian strikes.

It was ‍not immediately clear where the second person had died.

Major cities including the capital Kyiv have faced blackouts ‍and cuts to heating as Russia pounds a power grid already hobbled by a cold snap, leaving residents struggling amid temperatures reaching -16°C.

On Saturday (January 17, 2026), Mr. Zelenskyy said he had ordered imports of electricity and additional power equipment to be accelerated as much as possible.

Russia’s latest mass attack ⁠comes as U.S. and Ukrainian officials meet in Miami to discuss security ​guarantees and a post-war recovery package for Ukraine.

Washington has ⁠pushed Kyiv to agree to a peace framework that it will then present to Moscow, which has been cool on the diplomatic push and has demanded major ⁠Ukrainian concessions.

Russian drone attacks killed one person in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Monday (November 10, 2025) and wounded three in the Kharkiv region, officials said.

Kramatorsk, which had a pre-war population of around 150,000 people, is one of the few remaining civilian hubs in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control.

The city council posted on Telegram that seven drones hit the city within 30 minutes on Monday evening. A man in his 60s was killed in the shelling, according to preliminary information, it said.

“Civilian infrastructure and the residential quarters were under fire, there was damage to an educational institution and residential buildings,” it added.

Last month, a Russian drone killed two Ukrainian journalists and wounded a colleague in Kramatorsk, their news outlet and regional officials said.

A drone also hit a car in a village in northeastern Kharkiv region on Monday, wounding two men aged 24 and 42, as well as a 16-year-old boy, the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office wrote on Telegram.

Almost four years after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, both sides are heavily entrenched. Moscow’s army said on Monday it had captured three more villages on the sprawling front line.

Kyiv came under heavy drone and missile attack early on Sunday in what independent monitors said was one of the biggest Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital and the surrounding region since the full-scale war began.

Drones flew over the city and anti-aircraft fire rang out through the night. The attack was continuing at 7:20 a.m. (0420 GMT).

Kyiv’s military administration said at least six people had been injured as of 0440 GMT.

Some residents fled to metro stations deep underground for safety. Many regions across the country were under air raid alert, while neighbouring Poland closed airspace near two of its southeastern cities and its air force scrambled jets in response.

An overnight Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s central Kirovohrad region partially cut power and disrupted railway operations, officials said on Wednesday (September 17, 2025).

“As of now, the regional centre and 44 settlements in the Oleksandrivka territorial community have been partially cut off from the power supply,” Andriy Raykovych wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Some private homes were also damaged and railway travel has been disrupted, he said. Emergency services reported battling fires at three locations and said there were no casualties.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said the Russian forces targeted railway infrastructure in the overnight attack, without specifying the location.

“Last night, the enemy launched a massive drone strike in an attempt to disable the substations that power the railway network,” he wrote on Telegram.

“Such strikes have a clear goal: to disrupt passenger and freight transport, disrupt the stable operation of transport, and put additional pressure on people and the economy.”

He said that the Ukrainian state railways Ukrzaliznytsia deployed over 20 reserve locomotives in the attack’s aftermath.