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By Illia Novikov
July 10, 2025 — 11.50am
Kyiv: Russia fired more than 700 attack and decoy drones at Ukraine in a single night as Moscow intensifies its aerial and ground assault in the three-year war, Ukrainian officials said.
Russia has recently sought to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences by launching major attacks that include increasing numbers of decoy drones. The most recent one appeared aimed at disrupting Ukraine’s vital supply of Western weapons.
This photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service shows a fire following a Russian attack in the Kyiv region on Wednesday.Credit: AP
Lutsk, a city that’s home to airfields used by the Ukrainian army, was the hardest hit, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It lies near the border with Poland in western Ukraine, a region that is a crucial hub for receiving foreign military aid.
The attack comes at a time of increased uncertainty over the supply of crucial American weapons and as US-led peace efforts have stalled. Zelensky said that the Kremlin was “making a point” with its barrage.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces took aim at Ukrainian air bases and that “all the designated targets have been hit.” Meanwhile, Ukraine fired drones into Russia overnight, killing three people in the Kursk border region, including a 5-year-old boy, the local governor said.
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The Russian attack overnight on Tuesday included 13 missiles and 728 drones – the largest number launched in a single night in the war. On Friday, Russia fired 550 drones, less than a week after it launched 477, both the largest at the time, officials said.
Beyond Lutsk, 10 regions were struck. One person was killed in the Khmelnytskyi region, and two wounded in the Kyiv region, officials said.
Poland, a member of NATO, scrambled its fighter jets and put its armed forces on the highest level of alert in response to the attack, the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command wrote in an X post.
Russia’s bigger army has also launched a new drive to punch through parts of the 1000-kilometre front line, where short-handed Ukrainian forces are under heavy strain.
US President Donald Trump this week said he was “not happy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hasn’t budged from his ceasefire and peace demands since Trump took office in January and began to push for a settlement.
Trump also said the US would have to send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after Washington paused critical weapons deliveries to Kyiv.
On Wednesday, the US resumed deliveries of certain weapons, including 155 mm munitions and precision-guided rockets known as GMLRS, two American officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity so they could provide details that hadn’t been announced publicly. It’s unclear exactly when the weapons started moving.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump “has quite a tough style in terms of the phrasing he uses”, adding that Moscow hopes to “continue our dialogue with Washington and our course aimed at repairing the badly damaged bilateral ties”.
Zelensky, meanwhile, urged Ukraine’s partners to impose stricter sanctions on Russian oil and those who help finance the Kremlin’s war by buying it.
A firefighter puts out a fire near Kyiv on Wednesday following a Russian overnight attack.Credit: AP
“Everyone who wants peace must act,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian leader met Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday during a visit to Italy ahead of an international conference on rebuilding Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down 296 drones and seven missiles during the overnight attack, while 415 more drones were lost from radars or jammed, an air force statement said.
Ukrainian interceptor drones, developed to counter the Shahed ones fired by Russia, are increasingly effective, Zelensky said, adding that domestic production of anti-aircraft drones was being scaled up in partnership with some Western countries.
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Western military analysts say Russia is also boosting its drone manufacturing and could soon be capable of launching 1000 a night at Ukraine.
“Russia continues to expand its domestic drone production capacity amid the ever-growing role of tactical drones in front-line combat operations and Russia’s increasingly large nightly long-range strike packages against Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said.
Ukraine has also built up its own offensive drone threat, reaching deep into Russia with some long-range strikes.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that air defences downed 86 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions overnight on Tuesday, including the Moscow region.
The governor of Russia’s Kursk border region, Alexander Khinshtein, said a Ukrainian drone attack on the region’s capital city just before midnight on Tuesday killed three people and wounded seven others.
AP
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