A Ukrainian drone attack halted flights at airports across a wide swath of Russia overnight on Tuesday, Russian officials said, showing Kyiv’s ability to strike deep into Russian territory before a planned parade in Moscow to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
Air defenses responded to the drone volley in at least 11 regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported. The attack closed 13 airports, including all four major airports serving Moscow, according to a Russian aviation agency. Flights resumed Tuesday morning.
The Ukrainian authorities have not commented on the strikes.
It was unclear whether the barrage was intended to threaten the parade, because Kyiv has been routinely shooting at Russia with long-range drones, answering the nightly Russian bombardments of Ukraine. Russian drones on Tuesday hit the cities of Sumy, Kharkiv and Odesa, killing four people and wounding at least another 24, according to local officials.
Russia has said about 20 heads of state including China’s president, Xi Jinping, have accepted invitations to the parade, in Red Square, on Friday; President Vladimir V. Putin has asked for a three-day truce in the war for the occasion.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has rejected that proposal unless Russia agrees to extend any cease-fire for at least 30 days, calling the shorter truce too limited. He has also said that the cease-fire was offered only to put guests of the parade at ease.
The United States has supported the 30-day truce. But President Trump on Monday characterized the Russian offer as a step forward.
“President Putin just announced a three-day cease-fire, which doesn’t sound like much but it’s a lot if you knew where we started from,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday. “We’ve come a long way. It could be something will happen, but hopefully it will.”
Last week, Mr. Trump’s envoy to Ukraine in cease-fire talks, Gen. Keith Kellogg, in an interview with Fox News, criticized the Russian offer as “absurd.” General Kellogg said that “what the president wants is a permanent, comprehensive cease-fire, sea, air, land, infrastructure, for a minimum of 30 days.” He added that “the president has this one right on the money, and that’s where we want to go.”
Also on Tuesday, Ukraine and Russia carried out a major prisoner of war exchange, mediated by the United Arab Emirates, officials on both sides said. By midday, 205 Russian soldiers had been released in exchange for the same number of Ukrainians, the Russian Defense Ministry said. A similar prisoner swap last month saw a total of over 500 soldiers from both sides released.
Ukraine has been ramping up the manufacture of long-range exploding drones, an answer to the missiles and Iranian-designed drones Russia has been firing since its 2022 invasion.
Most are lightweight craft resembling small airplanes, some powered by chain saw motors. They fly meandering routes to avoid air defenses and, if they get through, at the last moment dive into targets to detonate a few dozen pounds of high explosives.
The drone attack Tuesday stretched for seven hours over a sprawling area of central Russia, the country’s Ministry of Defense reported in a social media post. It said it had shot down 105 Ukrainian drones over 11 regions, including areas east of Moscow in the Volga River valley, hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian border.
The mayor of Moscow, Sergei S. Sobyanin, posted that 19 drones were shot down over or near the capital on Tuesday, though without causing injuries or damage.
Debris from a downed drone hit a high-rise building near the Kashirskaya subway station in Moscow, according to Baza, a Russian news outlet. Other debris landed on a highway in the capital, Mr. Sobyanin wrote.
Drones forced Russian air traffic controllers to close flights for up to five hours, according to Rosaviatsia, the Russian agency overseeing aviation safety and air traffic control. Thirty-four flights bound for Moscow diverted away from the capital overnight, according to the agency.
Closer to the Ukrainian border, a strike on an electrical substation in the Kursk region of Russia late Monday wounded two teenagers, the regional governor, Aleksandr Khinshtein, said in a post on social media. The attack cut electricity to the town of Rylsk, he wrote.
A Ukrainian National Guard major, Oleksii Hetman, told Ukrainian media that Ukraine had staged a surprise counterattack in the Kursk region, advancing over territory it retreated from this spring. It was not possible to independently verify that account.
Although Russia’s attacks on Ukraine from the air have been intensifying this year, on the ground, Russian advances have mostly stalled.
The Institute for the Study of War, a United States-based analytical group, calculated that the Russian Army lost on average 153 soldiers killed or wounded for each square mile of territory captured in the Kursk region and inside Ukraine in the last four months of 2024. Over a comparable four-month period this year, the cost had risen substantially, with Russia losing on average 256 soldiers killed or wounded for each square mile of territory gained, according to the estimate.
Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
