Ukraine Says Russia Launched 499 Missiles and Drones in Biggest Air Assault of War

Russia launched almost 500 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian forces said on 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 cease-fire, Russia has been stepping up its large-scale barrages in recent months. That effort has further escalated since Ukraine mounted coordinated drone strikes on 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.

Then early on June 1, the Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia had launched 472 drones and seven missiles overnight. Ukrainian officials called it the largest combined aerial assault on the country since the start of the war.