On Dec. 11, 2025, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) launched its largest-scale, widest-reaching and most ambitious combined kamikaze drone operation against its giant northern neighbor, Russia, of the entire Russo-Ukrainian War.
Overnight, nearly 300 drones of various types, along with cruise missiles, struck targets across western and central Russia – a stretch of some 2,000 km (1,243 miles) including Moscow, according to Russian and Ukrainian sources reviewed by Kyiv Post. Consistent with Ukraine’s increasingly effective bombardment campaign of Russia’s fossil fuel industry that Kyiv kicked off in July, the Ukrainian main effort for the night appeared focused primarily on five Russian energy production facilities, igniting fires at all of them. Secondary attacks hit four military airfields.
About one-fifth of the Ukrainian kamikaze aircraft, in a possible distraction tactic, flew to Moscow and circled above the Russian capital, triggering a furious, night-long effort by local air defense forces to shoot them down. Authorities issued a rare general warning to Moscow residents to take to air raid shelters, and ordered a lockdown of the city’s four airports, stranding thousands of air travelers.
The longest-ranged attack hit an offshore oil production platform in the Caspian Sea, some 1,500 km (932 miles) from the nearest probable Ukrainian drone launch sites, scoring at least four hits and setting the Lukoil-owned rig pumping crude oil from 20 seabed wells on fire. The strike was reportedly carried out by long-range Lyutiy drones, a Ukrainian-produced push-propeller aircraft typically armed with an explosive warhead weighing 120-350 kg (265-772 lbs). By midday on Thursday, firefighters were still fighting to extinguish the blaze, and production had stopped. No injuries were reported. It was the first time in the war that Ukrainian forces had hit a target in the Caspian Sea.
There was no official comment from Kyiv about the strikes. Russian air watch information platforms shortly before midnight on Wednesday-Thursday were the first to report an extraordinarily large number of Ukrainian drones, most propeller-powered but some jet-powered, were heading into Russia.
Ukrainian civilian air defense watch platforms tracking the outgoing raid into Russian airspace showed that jet-propelled kamikaze aircraft accounted for about 20 percent of the total aircraft launched.
Independent Russian media, including the Astra news agency and The Moscow Times, confirmed the scale of the strike and most of the targets hit. Reports by Ukrainian mil-bloggers citing military intelligence sources, and Russian social media from regions attacked, likewise supported a picture of a massive series of raids carried out on a scale not attempted by Kyiv previously in the war. Per those combined reports, the Ukrainian drone-missile strike packages also attacked four other energy infrastructure targets in Russia:
- an oil refinery in the Samara region, 800 km (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border
- Afipsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region, 400 km (250 miles) away
- an oil refinery in the Saratov region, 600 km (380 miles) away
- Uryupisnk fuel storage depot in the Volgograd region, 700 km (435 miles) away
By the count of energy infrastructure targets hit in a single night – five, according to Ukrainian officials – the strikes set a new AFU record. In previous raids on Russian energy infrastructure, Ukrainian drones typically hit just two or three facilities per night.
But Ukrainian military information platforms contradicted the Kremlin’s narrative of massive shoot-downs and minimal damage, citing a flood of panicked Russian social media posts – backed by photos and videos – that appeared to show Ukrainian weapons flying unimpeded through Russian airspace toward targets hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers apart, and detonating in fiery ground explosions. Kyiv Post could not independently confirm either the Russian Defense Ministry’s claims or anecdotal reports of specific Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and offshore platforms, or the damage caused. Russian social media posts from cities targeted by the Ukrainian drones, according to a Kyiv Post review, were largely skeptical of the positive spin on the air raids promoted by Kremlin spokespeople. In Syrzan, locals reported hearing or seeing 15-20 propeller-driven drones pass overhead, seemingly flying past nonexistent air defenses, and then exploding within the city’s oil refinery perimeter. Local media reported fires or smoke. One video reportedly recorded during the strike showed a Lyutiy drone passing overhead at tree-top altitude.
A reportedly similar-sized strike package hitting the Afipsky refinery set fuel tanks on fire and, per international energy industry watch media, reduced production there by 20-30 percent. Per Kyiv Post, it was the sixth time since late July, when Ukraine kicked off its campaign to degrade Russian oil production, that Ukrainian drones had burned that facility.
Ukraine’s Tuesday attacks also broke with the long-standing strategy of focusing a night’s strikes on either Russia’s energy sector or its military infrastructure, but rarely both. Additional waves of aircraft targeted four military airfields in Russia’s central regions – Ivano, Ryazan, Voronezh – and in the Arctic Murmansk region.
According to unconfirmed reports from Ukrainian and independent military monitoring platforms, the Ivano strike hit three hangars and damaged two Su-34 strike jets; the Ryazan strike triggered explosions and secondary blasts at an airfield fuel depot; air defense positions were targeted in Voronezh; and at the Murmansk-region Olenya base, a bomber runway was cratered.
Moscow, a rare target for Ukrainian drone attacks, reportedly faced over 100 drones in what may be the largest hostile airspace violation over the Russian capital since World War II. Local air defenses claimed dozens of shootdowns and no significant ground damage, while social media images of debris appeared consistent with Ukrainian decoy drones. Civilian air traffic tracking platforms confirmed reports of airport shutdowns. The overnight air battles forced the cancellation of 130-200 flights, shutting down all four of Moscow’s airports for 8 to 10 hours. Local media showed hundreds of travelers sleeping on benches or on exercise mats on the floor of Sheremetovo Airport.
(Kyiv post)
