Russia launches biggest drone assault of the war, Ukraine says

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched almost 500 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian forces said Monday, in the largest in a string of record-breaking aerial assaults as peace talks stall.

Despite pressure from the Trump administration to work toward a ceasefire, Russia has been stepping up its barrages in recent months. That effort has further escalated since Ukraine mounted coordinated drone strikes of strategic bombers at air bases inside Russia on June 1.

While there were no reports of major damage and only one person was killed, the scale of Russia’s aerial assault was the latest step in a campaign by Moscow to overwhelm and deplete Ukrainian air defenses — one with no end in sight given a lack of progress in peace negotiations.

While mounting a new offensive on the ground in eastern Ukraine, Russia has been setting deadly records with the swarms of drones and missiles it launches at Ukraine, often hitting civilian targets in towns and cities across the country. Some records have lasted just a few days before being broken.

Russia has dramatically increased the pace of such attacks this year, reflecting its sharply accelerating production of attack drones. But for months it would launch a maximum 300 or so of them in a single night.

One person was killed in the Rivne region of western Ukraine and a Russian strike damaged a private home in the Kyiv region, according to local authorities. Officials in the Sumy region, in the northeast, said nine people had been injured over the past day. There were no other immediate reports of further damage or casualties.

But Ukraine has continued to try to take the war to Russia, including with the attack on Russian air bases and with further drone strikes deep inside the country.

The attacks came despite efforts by the Trump administration to cajole both sides toward a ceasefire. Those talks have sputtered: The latest round of talks between the two sides, this month in Istanbul, yielded little result apart from another agreement to swap prisoners.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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