Ukraine’s long-range drones push war up to 1,000 miles inside Russia

Ukrainian long-range drones now regularly hit targets deep inside Russia, reaching as far as the Ural Mountains, Bloomberg reported. Their strike range extends to 1,600 kilometers.

Kyiv plans to scale up long-range strikes, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on April 29. Ukraine can now hit targets in Russia more than 1,500 kilometers away, he said.

That means a quarter of Russia’s territory, where more than 70% of its 146 million people live, is now within reach of Ukrainian drones, Bloomberg reported.

Bloomberg noted that on April 25, a drone hit Yekaterinburg for the first time since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The city is about 1,700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border and had previously been considered entirely out of range.

“It was a shock. Although no one was killed, people finally realized the city is no longer safely far from the war,” a local resident named Vladimir said.

On May 5, drones attacked Kirishinefteorgsintez, the largest oil refinery in northwestern Russia, in Leningrad Oblast.