Russia Launches 433 Drones at Ukraine Overnight, Kyiv Says 371 Were Downed

Russia launched 433 attack drones at Ukraine in a single overnight wave that began on the evening of Saturday, October 31, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Sunday. By 7:30 a.m. on November 1, air defences had shot down or neutralised 371 of the drones, according to preliminary figures the Air Force announced on Telegram and Ukrinform reported. More than 40 drones were still in the air when the update was issued, and the Air Force said combat work was still under way.

What the Air Force reported

The attack started at 6 p.m. on October 31. The drones included Shahed type aircraft, 64 of them jet powered, along with Gerbera drones and Parodiya decoy drones, which are built to draw fire and confuse radar operators. Launch sites listed by the Air Force were Oryol, Kursk, Shatalovo, Bryansk and Millerovo in Russia, and the occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

The defence was carried out by combat aircraft, anti-aircraft missile units, electronic warfare teams, drone units and mobile fire groups, the small teams that move around the country with guns and portable missiles mounted on vehicles. Even with 371 drones stopped, strikes were recorded at 16 locations, and wreckage from downed drones fell at 14 other locations, the Air Force said.

Damage on the ground

A summary of regional reporting published by Particle News said the strikes damaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure, forced emergency power cuts in Kyiv and left nearly 100,000 customers without electricity in the Dnipropetrovsk region. The same summary reported civilian injuries and fires in the Sumy region, in the northeast of the country near the Russian border.

In Kyiv, a separate report on the night said a drone came down in the Desnianskyi district and started a fire near the entrance of a market, and that fire crews put the fire out. The Air Force update itself gave no casualty toll, and officials had not published a full damage assessment while drones were still in the air on Sunday morning.

A sharp step up in scale

The 433 drones make this one of the largest single overnight waves Ukraine has reported in recent weeks, and a sharp step up from the night before. On the night of October 30 into October 31, Ukraine reported 134 Russian drones, with impacts at 20 locations. Russian forces then launched a further daytime wave of 168 drones on October 31, according to a daily war brief that tracks official reports from both sides.

Ukrainian and Russian forces have traded long range drone attacks on energy sites for weeks. On the same night as the 433 drone wave, Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia, and the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region said more than 100 drones were destroyed there and an industrial plant in the Kstovo district was badly damaged. Ukrainian reports identified that plant as a major Lukoil oil refinery.

For people in Ukrainian cities, the immediate effect of a wave this size is measured in hours without power, water pressure problems and another night in shelters or corridors while alarms sound. Power crews cannot start full repairs until the all clear, and with more than 40 drones still reported in the air at 7:30 a.m., Sunday began with the attack still not over.