Russia fires ballistic missiles, Zircons and 123 drones at Ukraine hours before Witkoff and Kushner arrive in Moscow

Russia launched ballistic missiles, Zircon hypersonic missiles and 123 drones at Ukraine overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, November 12, with the weight of the attack falling on Kyiv and its wider region. The attack came hours before US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrive in Moscow for their meeting with Vladimir Putin.

The Ukrainian Air Force announcement records Iskander-M and North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles, missiles of the S-400 systems, and Zircon anti-ship missiles, launched from the Bryansk, Voronezh and Kursk regions. The drones were Shahed, Gerbera and Banderol (Dan-T) types and “Parodiya” decoys, from the directions of Oryol, Kursk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Millerovo, occupied Donetsk and Hvardiiske in Crimea. Of the 123 drones, 73 were jet-powered.

By 08:00, air defence had shot down or jammed 89 drones, among them 51 jet-powered ones and five Banderols, while several drones were still airborne. The Air Force counts strikes at 17 locations and debris falling at another 18.

Where they struck and what Moscow says

In the capital, the city military administration declared a red threat level shortly before 01:00 and urged residents to take shelter. In the morning it reported that in the Solomianskyi district an apartment block caught fire after a Russian strike, with partial destruction at fifth-floor level. The Kyiv regional administration wrote that in the Obukhiv area production facilities and warehouses of an enterprise were damaged and partly destroyed, and a fire broke out. Workers had been evacuated during the alert and there were no injuries. In the Zhytomyr region, the regional administration counts one injured and damage to houses and to energy and transport infrastructure from the strikes of the past 24 hours, while in the Dnipropetrovsk region nine drones were shot down. In the Rivne region in the west, the State Emergency Service said energy infrastructure, businesses and homes were hit overnight, with firefighters putting out fires until morning.

The Russian Ministry of Defence, for its part, spoke of a “massive strike” with precision weapons and drones on the defence industry and energy. Its list of targets includes the “Generator” plant in Kyiv, which Moscow says produces Hornet medium-range drones, facilities in Brovary, Kuzmintsi and Yahotyn that it links to drone assembly, solid-fuel rocket components and drone boosters, 330 kV and 110 kV substations in Zhytomyr and a cargo ship bound for Odesa. Moscow also says it shot down 71 Ukrainian drones overnight, including over the Moscow region. These are Russian claims that we have not verified independently.

The night before, Russia had used 163 drones and one Kh-59/69 missile. Two days earlier, ahead of the talks in Abu Dhabi, it fired one Iskander-M and 162 drones, as we reported in our report on the night before Abu Dhabi. For the talks themselves, see the first day in Abu Dhabi. Kyiv had also come under ballistic missile attack on November 7, with damage to the Northern Bridge. In October Ukraine imposed sanctions on 70 people involved in the production of Iskander-M and Zircon missiles.