Following another series of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Moscow is using diplomacy as a cover while continuing to kill Ukrainians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, responding to a question from U.S. President Donald Trump about whether he would travel to Moscow for talks, joked that there were too many Ukrainian drones there.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the chances of ending the war will increase when Moscow and St. Petersburg are targeted by a thousand drones rather than a hundred, because Russia's political elite will begin to feel the impact of the war.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has confirmed a strike on the Russian Armed Forces' space communications center located in the area of Belooomut in the Moscow region.
Two NATO countries on the Alliance's eastern flank have warned that Russia may stage provocations in the Baltic states or Poland if it perceives the war front moving closer to Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Ukrainian intelligence has obtained internal Russian documents indicating that Russia is redeploying air defense systems from various regions to Moscow and the Kerch Bridge, weakening protection in other areas of Russia and in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.
The Ukrainian attack on targets in the Moscow region on Thursday was another example of how Ukraine's strategy of overloading Russian air defense systems with drones has proven successful.
The second drone attack in a week on the Moscow oil refinery owned by Gazprom Neft has damaged a second major crude processing unit and triggered multiple fires at the facility.
Following Ukrainian drone strikes on an oil refinery, residents of Moscow and the Moscow Region began complaining about an “oil rain” that began falling in various parts of the Russian capital.
President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine does not recommend representatives of countries close to Russia visiting Moscow on May 9, amid Russian strikes and threats.
In recent weeks, additional layers of air defense have been deployed around Moscow by relocating systems from other Russian regions, creating new opportunities for Ukraine's long-range sanctions.
Russia is facing a shortage of anti-aircraft missiles and is forced to redeploy air defense systems between regions to protect against Ukrainian strikes, with the Moscow region remaining the most heavily defended.
A light aircraft that crashed in the Moscow region on Friday, March 20, may have been mistakenly shot down by Russian air defense after being misidentified as a drone.