An area of Russian-controlled territory more than twice the size of California is vulnerable to Ukrainian drone strikes, according to an independent Russian news outlet.
A spike in drone attacks on infrastructure within Russia has been reported in recent weeks, particularly on energy facilities. Kyiv has not directly claimed responsibility for the strikes, but they raise questions about the Russian air-defense capabilities against Ukrainian bombardments. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email for comment.
Verstka, an independent investigative news outlet, said the area of Russia that Ukraine could strike had increased by more than 300,000 square kilometers (115,000 square miles) since September 2023. It added that the area included the cities of St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl.
This means that "more than a million square kilometers of Russian territory (excluding the annexed Crimea and Sevastopol) is located in a zone vulnerable to drones of the Ukrainian army," according to Verstka's calculation. This equates to 386,000 square miles, which is over twice the size of California.
Vertska noted that a kamikaze drone hit the southern Russian city of Sochi for the first time on September 20. Two days later, another drone struck the town of Tuapse, 70 miles north in the Krasnodar region.
Vladimir Putin's home city of St. Petersburg was hit by a Ukrainian drone for the first time on January 18, while another unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hit the Nevsky Mazut oil refinery on January 31, despite reports it had been intercepted by an S-400 surface-to-air missile system.
Meanwhile, an attempted drone strike on Yaroslavl, a city located around 160 miles northeast of Moscow, was intercepted on January 29. And, two days later, drones were fired for the first time towards Nizhny Novgorod, located around 500 miles from Ukraine.
Overnight on Friday, a fire broke out at a refinery operated by Lukoil in the southwestern Volgograd region, located 200 miles from Ukraine. Andrey Bocharov, the regional governor, blamed the drone attack on Kyiv.
Bocharov said that air-defense systems and electronic jamming repelled the attack. He added that the fire started after one of the intercepted drones fell on the site of what Lukoil describes as "the biggest producer of oil products in the federal South district."
Russia has also stepped up its attacks targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine's air force reported on Saturday that its air-defense systems had destroyed nine of 14 Shahed-type drones that Moscow launched from southern Russia and Crimea. Newsweek has as yet been unable to verify this figure.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
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