Photo: social media

Ukraine struck cities across Russia in the early hours of Tuesday morning in its largest drone attack of 2025 so far, Russian media and regional authorities reported.

According to the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel SHOT, Russian air defence systems intercepted over 200 drones and five US-produced ATACMS ballistic missiles in the attack.

Roman Busargin, Governor of Saratov in Russia’s Volga region, said that the two industrial facilities in the cities of Saratov and Engels had been damaged after a “massive” attack on the region in which local air defences “neutralised a large number of targets”.

Schools in both cities would hold classes online on Tuesday as a precautionary measure, Busargin said.

Local news website 164.ru reported that one of the facilities attacked in Engels was an oil depot that had been on fire for five days following a previous Ukrainian drone strike on Wednesday. It also said that a fire had broken out at a site near a Rosneft oil refinery in Saratov following Tuesday’s attack.

In Tatarstan, also in Russia’s Volga region, authorities said that a gas tanker had caught fire in the capital Kazan following a drone strike, with airports in the cities of Kazan, Saratov, Tambov, Penza, Ulyanovsk, Nizhnekamsk and Izhevsk all temporarily halting flights on Tuesday morning.

The governors of the Tula and Oryol regions reported that at least 17 Ukrainian drones had been downed by air defences over both regions overnight, with a further 14 intercepted over the Rostov region and “several” over the Voronezh region.

Russia’s Defence Ministry had not commented on the attack as of Tuesday morning. Ukraine’s Air Force, meanwhile, said it had downed 58 of the 80 drones Russia had launched at Ukraine overnight.