Ukrainian drone raid grounds flights at all four Moscow airports
Over 100 drones intercepted hours after Abu Dhabi talks concluded, Zelensky says Starshield speed caps stopped interceptors catching Russian jet drones
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independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Russian air defence claimed to have intercepted more than 100 Ukrainian drones over Moscow in the early hours of Friday, a raid that forced restrictions at all four of the capital's main airports: Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky. Mayor Sergey Sobyanin reported the intercepts, and a later post relayed by Russian media said fifteen more drones had been destroyed as emergency services worked at crash sites. The attack came hours after trilateral talks between the United States, Ukraine and Russia concluded in Abu Dhabi.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who described the talks as "very intense", travelled on to Moscow to see Vladimir Putin and to Ireland to see Volodymyr Zelensky, pledging to work towards Donald Trump's goal of ending the war. Putin, they said, has agreed that Europe may join the next round. The strikes did not pause for any of it. The governor of Volgograd reported at least four people killed in a Ukrainian attack that local media said had hit an oil refinery, with a production facility in Rostov-on-Don also reported struck. Kyiv's General Staff listed Russia's five largest refineries — Omsk, Kirishi, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl — as hit since 30 October, along with the smaller Novokuibyshevsk and Saratov plants. The stated aim is to bring the war home to Russians through pump prices.
In Kaliningrad, a court has sentenced Maria Bontsler, a 66-year-old human rights lawyer, to twelve years in a penal colony for treason. Prosecutors said she had passed sensitive information to Ukraine; her final statement said her prosecution stemmed from "providing qualified legal assistance to dissidents, members of the opposition, and others." A Russian colonel was separately reported killed in a car explosion outside St Petersburg.
The restriction Ukraine cannot lift itself is quieter. Zelensky, speaking in Copenhagen, said his units had for days recorded serious disruption to Starshield, the military version of Starlink, with systemic limits capping the service at 161kph. The cap meant Ukrainian interceptors could not reach the speed needed to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones, and some strikes had already got through. "This helps Russians kill more Ukrainians and carry out more accurate strikes," he said. SpaceX sells Starshield to the US government, not to Kyiv, and Ukraine has spent the days since asking the American side why the cap returned.
A country whose drones can ground every flight in Moscow is still waiting for Washington to explain why its own network slowed down.