Attachments
Key trends
- Following months of clashes and Russia’s advances toward the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, Russian forces occupied Kalenyky in the Donetsk region and seized Sopych along the international border in the Sumy region.
- Russian forces launched at least 36 long-range missile and drone attacks, including on the western regions of Lviv and Volyn.
- Russian strikes killed at least 49 civilians in the Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, and Zaporizhia regions. Ukrainian drone strikes reportedly killed five civilians in the Russian-controlled parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
Spotlight: Ukraine’s drone campaign reaches deep into Russia as strikes on Moscow hit record levels
Over the weekend of 14 to 16 March, Ukrainian forces conducted one of the largest drone assaults on Moscow since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Russian air defense forces destroyed approximately 250 drones approaching the Russian capital over two days,1 while Moscow’s airports were shut down, and residents reported explosions across the city’s suburbs.2
The strikes on Moscow were only part of a broader escalation of Ukraine’s long-range drone activity. During the week of 14 to 20 March, ACLED records 253 air- and drone strikes conducted by Ukrainian forces in Russia and 57 such strikes in the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhia regions, as well as in Crimea. Reportedly, according to Ukrainian military sources, during the night of 17 and 18 March, an estimated 250 to 300 drones entered Russian airspace in one of the largest single swarms of the war. They hit a chemical and explosives factory in Stavropol, a military electronics facility in occupied Sevastopol, and a Russian troop base near Mariupol.3 Earlier in the same week, Ukrainian drones struck oil depots in the Russian towns of Tikhoretsk and Labinsk in Krasnodar, the Afipsky oil refinery, and port infrastructure at Kavkaz on the Kerch Strait.
Launching such a high volume of drone strikes may be part of a deliberate strategy to degrade Russia’s air defenses and enable progressively larger swarms of drones. According to Kyiv Post, from 1 January to 18 March, Ukrainian forces launched at least 110 drone strike packages (each involving multiple drones against individual targets) against various sites in Russia, including energy infrastructure, ammunition depots, and military factories. Ukraine's SBU Alpha unit claims to have neutralized roughly half of Russia's operational Pantsir air defense stockpile over 2025 and early 2026 as a result.4
For more on Ukrainian long-range strikes in Russia, please read our latest report Ukraine war: How six new trends are shaping the conflict.