MOSCOW — Russia said Thursday it had repelled a massive overnight Ukrainian air assault across 12 regions, claiming to have downed 287 drones as a wave of strikes forced Moscow’s main airports to halt traffic and divert flights. Officials described the latest Moscow drone attack as one of the largest of the war, even as casualties appeared limited and details could not be independently verified, Dec. 11, 2025.
‘One of the largest’ Moscow drone attack of the war
The Defence Ministry said Russian air defenses “intercepted and shot down” hundreds of unmanned aircraft overnight, including more than 30 aimed at the capital and its surrounding region, according to figures carried by state media and first reported internationally by Reuters. Ukrainian authorities had not commented by midday, in line with Kyiv’s usual silence on cross-border strikes, and battlefield claims from either side remained impossible to confirm.
Russia’s aviation regulator said all four major Moscow airports — Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky — temporarily suspended operations as drones approached, sending hundreds of flights into holding patterns or on to alternative destinations. Nearly 400 flights were cancelled, delayed or rerouted nationwide, and St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport reported taking in diverted traffic, according to figures cited by Anadolu Agency. Airspace restrictions were later lifted, but the disruption underscored how each large Moscow drone attack now ripples through Russia’s already strained civil aviation system.
A factbox published by Russian state news agency TASS said drones were intercepted over at least 12 regions, from Bryansk and Kursk near the Ukrainian border to the Moscow area itself. It reported broken windows, minor structural damage and several damaged cars in regional cities but no confirmed deaths. Officials again denounced what they called “terrorist attacks” on civilian infrastructure, while Ukrainian officials have consistently framed long-range strikes as efforts to degrade Russia’s oil industry and war economy.
Pattern of escalating Moscow drone attack waves
Thursday’s Moscow drone attack follows a clear pattern of increasingly ambitious raids on Russia’s political and economic heartland. On March 11, Russia said Ukraine launched 337 drones across the country, including 91 around the capital, in what it called the largest Ukrainian strike on the Moscow region to date; debris killed three workers at a warehouse and briefly shut all four Moscow airports, according to a contemporaneous Reuters report.
Earlier, on May 6, a separate barrage of more than 100 drones prompted Russia to close all four of the capital’s international airports and several regional hubs for hours, ahead of Victory Day commemorations. That Moscow drone attack forced mass cancellations and diversions and was widely seen as a test of Russia’s air defenses around the capital, according to Associated Press coverage.
Even before 2025, Ukrainian drones had periodically reached the city. A strike on Nov. 10, 2024, sent at least 34 drones toward Moscow, temporarily closing three airports and diverting dozens of landings. Russian officials also reported fatalities and injuries in other large attacks on the Moscow region that autumn, underscoring that each new Moscow drone attack builds on an expanding playbook of long-range strikes.
Limited destruction, growing strategic pressure
Initial reports from Thursday’s Moscow drone attack pointed to relatively modest physical damage compared with the scale of the assault: shattered glass, small fires and localized power outages rather than large-scale destruction. But the sheer number of drones — and the hours-long shutdown of airports in a city of more than 20 million people — highlighted how routine such disruptions have become for Russian civilians far from the front line.
At the same time, Russia has continued its own large-scale missile and drone barrages against Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, including a December assault involving more than 650 drones and 50 missiles across multiple regions. As both sides rely more heavily on cheap, long-range unmanned systems, each major Moscow drone attack risks further escalation — and reinforces that the war’s most intense battles are now being fought not just along trench lines, but deep in the skies above the combatants’ capitals.
