Published on 6/26/2026
The Russian-Ukrainian war witnessed a field escalation on Thursday night and Friday dawn, as the authorities in Moscow announced that they had repelled a large-scale drone attack, while Ukraine announced that it had thwarted a Russian ballistic missile attack targeting the capital, Kiev.
In Russia, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that Russian defenses shot down at least 28 drones heading towards the Russian capital within about one hour, noting that specialists from the emergency services were working at the sites where the debris fell.
These attacks come after five people were killed yesterday, Thursday, in Ukrainian attacks on Russia and the Crimean Peninsula.
Explosions sound in Kyiv
On the other hand, violent explosions sounded in Kiev minutes after the Ukrainian Air Force and municipal authorities warned of monitoring Russian missiles heading towards the capital, prompting the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, to call on residents to take shelter in shelters.
Klitschko and city authorities confirmed that Russian missile debris fell in an open area in a Kiev neighborhood, causing a fire to catch on in a storage area, and rescue teams rushed to the area to deal with the incident.
The head of the Kiev Military Administration, Timur Tkachenko, reported via Telegram that Russia launched ballistic missiles towards Kiev, stressing that the air defenses dealt with those missiles.
Field journalists observed clouds in the sky of the capital, created by the launch of Ukrainian air defense missiles, and explosions were heard during the interception of the projectiles. A field correspondent also confirmed that he witnessed the shooting down of at least one Russian missile.
A campaign targeting the Russian energy artery
Yesterday, Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he agreed to launch a 40-day campaign to pressure Russia to end the war on Kiev, after consulting with the head of the Ukrainian Security Service regarding strikes directed at Russian targets.
Zelensky wrote on the Telegram platform today, Thursday, “I agreed to a 40-day operation carried out by the security service to influence the aggressor country in order to pressure an end to the war.”
For months, Ukraine has launched waves of medium- and long-term strikes on targets in Russia or in areas controlled by Russia, focusing mainly on the oil sector.
Ukraine has begun targeting, on an almost weekly basis, oil refineries, transportation pipelines, and warehouses in Russia, in an effort to deprive Moscow of revenues from fuel sales, which are used to finance its war effort in Ukraine since 2022.
