Russia-Ukraine War: Drones Fly Both Ways amid Shifting Frontline Developments
The war in Ukraine continues to intensify, with mutual drone strikes and a complete stalemate in negotiations aimed at ending a conflict that has now entered its third year.
A Russian drone attack killed one person and caused several fires on Monday evening in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, according to the city council.
“Kramatorsk came under a massive attack — seven drones struck the city within thirty minutes,” the council wrote on Telegram.
“According to preliminary information, one man born in 1961 was killed,” it added, noting damage to an educational institution and several residential buildings.
Elsewhere, three people, including a 16-year-old boy, were injured Monday evening when a Russian drone hit their car in the Kharkiv region, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.
Russian forces, better equipped and larger in number than the Ukrainian army, continue to advance in the east, particularly in the Donetsk region where fighting remains concentrated. Moscow announced on Monday that its troops had captured three additional villages.
Alongside its ground advances, Russia has intensified airstrikes in recent weeks on Ukraine’s railway network and energy infrastructure as temperatures drop with the approach of winter.
Meanwhile, Kyiv continues to target fuel depots, refineries, and other facilities inside Russia. On Tuesday morning, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses had intercepted 37 Ukrainian attack drones overnight, without reporting significant damage.
“During the night, air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 37 Ukrainian drones,” the ministry said in a statement.
It added that ten drones were downed over Crimea, eight over Saratov, seven over Oryol, three each over Lipetsk, Rostov, and the Black Sea, and one over each of the Bryansk, Voronezh, and Kaluga regions.
According to Russia’s Sputnik agency, Russian military commanders reported Tuesday that Ukrainian soldiers were “surrendering en masse in Volchansk,” in the Kharkiv region.
A Russian military source told the agency that “the collective surrender of Ukrainian troops continues in Volchansk, with four soldiers from the 57th mechanized infantry brigade captured in the past twenty-four hours.”
Military analyst Andrei Marochko stated that Ukrainian attempts to breach Russian defenses near the village of Moskovka, also in Kharkiv, had failed.
“Moskovka is a village about four kilometers northwest of Kupiansk, which Russian forces captured this summer,” he said.
Kyiv has not yet commented on these reports.
Since February 2022, Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a full-scale war. Moscow has seized large areas of Ukrainian territory, and its advance appears to have accelerated in recent months amid signs of exhaustion and recruitment difficulties within the Ukrainian army.
