An engine of a Russian drone lays on the ground as rescuers work at the site of a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine on May 7, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Petrochemical plant of Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat company in Salavat in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russia launched a wide drone and missile attack across Ukraine on Wednesday (October 22, 2025), killing at least six people, Ukrainian officials said, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump put his planned meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on hold, saying he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time”.

Ukraine’s Energy Minister said a “massive combined overnight attack” on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was still underway early Wednesday (October 22, 2025) — the latest in Russia’s effort to cripple the country’s energy system before winter. At least 18 people were injured in the attack, said Kyiv administration head Tymur Tkachenko.

The attack caused emergency power blackouts across the country, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said. Repairs were underway where possible and electricity would be restored “as soon as possible,” it said.

“Another night that proves Russia does not feel enough pressure for prolonging the war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement.

Also read: Trump says he will meet Putin in Hungary after ‘productive’ talks

He said the strike caused damages in the cities of Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia, as well as Odesa, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, and the wider regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Sumy.

Pressuring Russia

Mr. Zelenskyy urged the European Union, the United States, and the Group of Seven industrialised nations, or G7, to take steps to sanction Russia.

“It is very important that the world does not remain silent now and that there is a united response to Russia’s treacherous strikes,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Army General Staff said the country’s forces struck a chemical plant in Russia’s Bryansk region late on Tuesday night using air-to-surface Storm Shadow missiles. The plant is an important part of the Russian military and industrial complex producing gun powder, explosives, missile fuel and ammunition.

Relentless attacks

In the Kyiv region, rescuers discovered the bodies of three people — including two children — after a strike set a private house ablaze in the village of Pohreby, regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk said. According to him, the victims were a woman and her two daughters — an infant of 6 months and a 12-year-old girl.

“Their bodies were found at the site of the fire,” the Governor said. “This is a tragedy for the entire community, for the Kyiv region, and for the country.” Two more people were found dead in the Dnipro district of the Ukrainian capital, where emergency services rescued 10 people after a fire caused by drone debris hit the sixth floor of a 16-storey residential building, local authorities said.

The attack also blew out windows of a medical facility, and debris was found at another residential building, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported on his Telegram channel.

In the Darnytskyi district of the capital, emergency services were responding after drone debris hit a 17-storey residential building causing a fire on five floors. Fifteen people had to be rescued, including two children.

In the Desnianskyi district, 20 people were rescued after the facade of a 10-story building was damaged and a gas pipe caught fire. Debris from a drone also fell on a dormitory building and rescue workers were headed to the scene, Klitschko said.

The large-scale overnight aerial attack also targeted the city of Zaporizhzhia and the port city of Izmail in the southern Odesa region.

An “energy object” in Odesa region suffered “extensive damages” according to DTEK, Ukraine’s biggest private energy operator. The company also said Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions experience emergency blackouts.

Following the blackouts, Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said that “as soon as security conditions allow, energy workers will begin assessing the consequences of the attack and carrying out repair work.”

Ukrainian drones hit enterprise in Russia’s Mordovia, local head says

A massive Ukrainian drone attack hit Russia’s region of Mordovia on Wednesday (October 22, 2025), damaging a local enterprise, the region’s Governor said in a statement on Telegram.

Local head Artyom Zdunov said that emergency services were at the scene of the strike on the facility, which he did not name.

Published – October 22, 2025 12:05 pm IST

Servicemen of the tank battalion of the 128th Mountain assault Transcarpathian Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine fire a tank during a training, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine January 28, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An overnight Ukrainian drone attack hit Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station, part of the oil export route via the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, causing a fire and oil products to leak, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine said on Wednesday.

The attack also hit a Russian missile storage facility in Russia’s Tver region, causing a string of explosions, the source told Reuters.

Reuters could not independently verify the information.

The source said the filtration pump site and tanks with additives were damaged in the attack and that supplies via the main pipeline to the Ust-Luga terminal had temporarily been suspended.

A source in Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly Transneft said there had been no disruptions and described the damage in Tver region as limited.

Ukrainian forces have stepped up drone strikes on Russian military and energy facilities in recent weeks to raise the cost of the war for Moscow as the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches next month.

Its military said earlier on Wednesday that it had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region in an overnight drone attack and caused a large fire.

Russia has conducted regular drone strikes on targets in Ukraine since 2022.

The source said the attack on the oil pumping station and missile storage facility was a joint operation conducted by the SBU security agency and Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces.

A view shows a damaged multi-storey residential building following an alleged Ukrainian drone attack in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Kazan, Russia on December 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Kyiv on Saturday (December 21, 2024) staged a major drone attack on the Russian city of Kazan, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the frontier, the latest in a series of escalating aerial attacks in the nearly three-year conflict.

A drone smashed into a high-rise apartment building in Kazan, a city of more than 1.3 million, damaging a skyscraper but leaving no victims, local officials said.

Also read |Russian forces take control of Kostiantynopolske in eastern Ukraine, Defence Ministry says

Though attacks so far into Russian territory are rare, Kazan and the surrounding oil-rich region of Tatarstan have previously been targeted by Ukrainian drones.

Such strikes are seen as embarrassing for Russia, almost three years into its military offensive on Ukraine.

“Today Kazan suffered a massive drone attack,” Rustam Minnikhanov, the head of Tatarstan, said in a post on Telegram.

“While before industrial enterprises were attacked, now the enemy attacks civilians in the morning,” he added.

Videos on Russian social media networks showed drones hitting high rise buildings and setting off fireballs.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said two drones hit a 37-storey apartment block.

She said Ukraine had been targeting an unspecified industrial facility, but that it suffered no damage.

Ukraine, which has staged regular attacks on targets inside Russia since the start of the full scale military offensive in February 2022, did not immediately comment.

Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia temporarily closed Kazan international airport, one of the country’s busiest.

Some residents were evacuated, but authorities did not provide figures, and all major public events in the area were cancelled as a precaution.

Alongside the two drones that hit the apartment block, three drones were shot down and three were suppressed by air defence systems, Zakharova said.

In a post on Telegram, she said Kyiv was taking out its “anger for tangible military defeats on the peaceful population of Russia.”

Russia’s defence ministry said Saturday that the army had captured a new village near the key city of Kurakhove in eastern Ukraine where Russian forces have made major advances in recent months.

The attack on Kazan comes a day after Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv killed one and wounded 13, and after five were killed by a Ukrainian attack on the Russian border region of Kursk, where its troops have been staging an offensive since August.

Ukraine launched at least 17 drones targeting Moscow early on Sunday, forcing the temporary closure of two of the capital’s airports, Russian officials said.

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the 12 drones were destroyed in the Ramenskoye and Kolomensky districts of the Moscow region, as well as in Domodedovo city, southwest of Moscow.

“According to preliminary information, there is no damage or casualties at the site of the fall of the debris,” Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app. “Emergency services are on the sites.”

The Ramenskoye district, some 45 km (30 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, was last targeted in September Ukraine’s biggest attack on the Russian capital, when Russian air defence units destroyed 20 drones.

Rosaviatsia, Russia’s federal air transport agency, said on Telegram that “to ensure the safety of civil aircraft flights, temporary restrictions have been introduced on the operation of the Domodedovo and Zhukovo airports,” starting at 0530 GMT.

It did not say how long the restrictions would be in force.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Ukrainian air defence intercepts a Shahed drone mid-air during a Russian aerial attack on the capital in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Seven Ukrainian drones were also destroyed over the western Smolensk region, Vasily Anokhin, governor of the region, which borders Belarus

A Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire and forced the partial evacuation of residents in Russia’s Tver region, with officials saying on Wednesday (September 18, 2024) that Kyiv targeted several western regions in strikes overnight.

Wreckage from a destroyed Ukrainian drone sparked a fire in the town of Toropets in the western part of the Tver region, Igor Rudenya, the governor of the region located northwest of Moscow said on the Telegram messaging app.

Firefighters were trying to contain the fire, Rudenya said, but he did not say what was burning. Russian air defence units were still trying to repel “a massive drone attack” over the town, he added.

According to a RIA state news agency report from 2018, Russia was building an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a 1,000-year-old town, which has a population of just over 11,000.

Seven Ukrainian drones were also destroyed over the western Smolensk region, Vasily Anokhin, governor of the region, which borders Belarus, said on Telegram.

Fourteen more drones were downed over the Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, and several more were destroyed over the regions of Oryol and Tula, the governors of those regions said.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Kyiv has previously said its strikes on Russia target military, energy and transport infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts.

Russian officials rarely disclose the full extent of damage inflicted by Ukrainian attacks.

As Ukraine has ramped up its domestic drone production over the past two years, it has increased attacks on Russian territory.

Ukraine’s biggest-ever drone attack targeted the Russian capital in September, killing at least one, wrecking homes and disrupting flights at Moscow’s airports.

A Russian national tricolor flag tops the Russian Defence Ministry headquarters on the bank of the Moskva river in Moscow.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Russia’s Defence Ministry on May 30 said it neutralised 13 Ukrainian aerial drones in the southern Krasnodar region and close to the annexed Crimean peninsula.

On May 30 morning, “five Ukrainian aerial drones were shot down by anti-aircraft defence systems in the Krasnodar region,” the Ministry said in a statement.

Another eight drones were intercepted during the night “over the Black Sea, close to the Crimean coast”, the statement added.

The Russian Army also said it had destroyed two Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea that were “heading for Crimea”.

Eight tactical ATACMS missiles were shot down by Russian air defence systems over the Sea of Azov, near Crimea.

Faced with more than two years of Russian bombardments, Ukraine has taken the fight to Russian soil, often targeting energy infrastructure across the border.

Two Ukrainian soldiers walk along the destroyed city in the fog on October 26, 2023 in Avdiivka, Ukraine.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Russian air defence shot down over 30 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula overnight Saturday, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on October 29.

“The air defense systems in place destroyed 36 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the Black Sea and the northwestern part of the Crimean peninsula,” the Ministry wrote on Telegram.

Local authorities in the southern Krasnodar region bordering the Black Sea said that a fire broke out at an oil refinery in the early hours of October 29 but did not specify the cause. “The reasons for the incident are being established,” a statement from local authorities said, amid claims in local media outlets that the fire had been caused by a drone strike or debris from a downed drone.

Drone strikes and shelling on the Russian border regions and Moscow-annexed Crimea are a regular occurrence. Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for attacks on Russian territory or the Crimean peninsula.

In Ukraine, the country’s air force said on October 29 it had shot down five Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia overnight.

Close to the front line in the country’s east, where Ukrainian and Russian forces are locked in a grinding battle for control, four police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk province.

British intelligence assessed this weekend that Russia had suffered some of its biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the town of Avdiivka, also in the Donetsk province. The U.K. Ministry of Defence’s regular intelligence update on October 28 morning noted that Russia had committed “elements of up to eight brigades” in the area since it launched its “major offensive effort” in mid-October.

Also on October 29, a prominent ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia might take action to seize assets of European Union member States it considers hostile if the EU proceeds with its plan to “steal” frozen Russian funds to support Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction efforts.

“A number of European politicians (…) have once again started talking about stealing our country’s frozen funds in order to continue the militarization of Kyiv,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, wrote on Telegram.

Mr. Volodin made the statement in response to an announcement on October 27 by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, on a proposal to use earnings from frozen Russian state assets to support Ukraine in its rebuilding.

Mr. Volodin asserted that Moscow would respond with measures that would inflict significant costs on the EU if it were to take action against Russian assets, a considerable portion of which are in Belgium.

“Such a decision would require a symmetrical response from the Russian Federation. In that case, far more assets belonging to unfriendly countries will be confiscated than our frozen funds in Europe,” Mr. Volodin said.