Russia’s air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 21 Ukrainian drones, the Russian Defence Ministry reported on Sunday (August 31, 2025) after an overnight attack.
Eleven drones were downed over the Volgograd region in southern Russia, while the rest were destroyed over the Rostov, Belgorod and Bryansk regions in Russia’s southwest, the Ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
This comes in the wake of a large aerial attack launched by Russia on Saturday (August 30, 2025), two days after a rare airstrike on central Kyiv killed 23 and damaged European Union diplomatic offices as U.S.-led efforts to end the three-year war staggered.
The attacks came less than two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump met Russia’s Vladimir Putin for a summit in Alaska, a meeting that marked the end of Mr. Putin’s diplomatic isolation in the West but yielded few details on how the war might end.