Russia’s military announced early Monday that its air defense forces had intercepted 148 Ukrainian drones within a three-hour window. Emergency teams are actively working to restore electricity to nearly half a million homes affected by outages linked to these aerial assaults.
On Sunday evening, a drone strike resulted in the death of a civil defense volunteer in Belgorod, a Russian border region frequently targeted by Ukrainian forces. Additionally, drones struck an apartment building in the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk. The Russian Defence Ministry reported that the majority of the 148 drones were intercepted between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. local time (1700-2000 GMT), primarily over central and southern parts of Russia.
Novorossiysk’s mayor, Andrei Kravchenko, confirmed that debris from the drones hit a high-rise residential building, though no casualties have been reported so far. Meanwhile, in Crimea, a territory annexed by Russia in 2014, the governor of Sevastopol stated the city endured four drone attacks throughout the day, with seven drones shot down during the most recent wave.
In the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Andrei Chertkov, head of the Russia-installed administration, announced that power had been restored to the major cities of Donetsk and Makiivka following Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure. Earlier, Chertkov had reported that nearly 500,000 households were left without electricity. Restoration efforts continue in areas still experiencing outages.
Similarly, repair crews are working to reinstate power in Russian-controlled parts of the Zaporizhzhia region after widespread blackouts caused by attacks on energy facilities.
