Ukraine Counts 88 Russian Drones; Russia Claims 531 Downed

KYIV, Ukraine, Oct. 28 — RussiaRussia attacked Ukraine overnight with 88 attack drones and a ballistic missile, Ukraine’s Air Force said on Wednesday, the fewest drones in any of its morning counts this month. By 8 a.m., it said, 71 drones had been shot down or suppressed, among them 31 of the 38 jet-powered drones; weapons hit eight locations. It did not say what became of the missile.The Month’s CountThe Air Force’s morning tallies for the 28 nights of October, each counted from 6 p.m., run from 580 drones on the night into Oct. 15 down to Wednesday’s 88. The previous low was 107, on the night into Oct. 1. The night into Tuesday brought 280, aimed mainly at Kyiv.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses destroyed 531 Ukrainian drones over 13 Russian regions, the Moscow region among them, between 8 p.m. Tuesday and 8 a.m. Wednesday, Moscow time. That is more than twice the 222 it claimed the night before. Neither count can be checked independently. The two counts are different measures, launches against claimed interceptions, over different windows of the night.

Nor did the night end at 8 a.m. Between 8:23 and 11:31 a.m. Kyiv time, the Air Force posted 29 more alerts of jet drones over nine regions, as far west as Volyn. In Kharkiv, a jet drone injured five people overnight, among them a four-year-old child, and set fire to homes and industrial buildings, rescuers said, Ukrinform reported.

The reported targets in Russia were a steelworks and a fertilizer plant. In Lipetsk, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ said it had detected “a fire in the area of NLMK (Novolipetsk Steel) following air defense operations and/or the fall of an object,” Ukrinform reported.NLMKNovolipetsk Steel is NLMK’s main production site, in Lipetsk; NLMK puts its capacity at more than 14.3 million metric tons of steel a year. Ukraine has sanctioned the plant, and Canada and Australia have sanctioned its owner, Vladimir Lisin, the Kyiv Independent reports. The region’s governor, Igor Artamonov, wrote on Telegram, in the Kyiv Post’s translation: “Reports are circulating on social media and messaging apps about a major fire at an industrial facility. This is not true. Drone debris fell in a wooded area, sparking a fire that has now been contained.”

In the Tula region, Gov. Dmitry Milyaev said drone debris in Novomoskovsk had damaged apartment buildings, private homes and infrastructure in the adjacent industrial zone, and that laboratories had been sent to the town; he did not name a plant. Exilenova+ and the Russian outlet Astra said the target was EuroChem’s Azot chemical plant, one of Russia’s largest producers of nitrogen fertilizers, the Kyiv Post reported. Ukraine’s military had not commented on either report by 11:30 a.m. Kyiv time.

What Ukraine’s drones hit has become a bargaining chip. President Volodymyr Zelensky told journalists that he had asked President Trump, in New York, for a “winter package” of interceptor missiles and offered in return to stop striking Russia’s oil refineries. “I specified the number of missiles and said that if you give them to me, we won’t strike any oil refineries,” he said, in Ukrinform’s translation. In Mr. Zelensky’s account of the private conversation, Mr. Trump said the United States would do its best but did not have very many missiles itself.

Ukraine is getting an average of 12 Patriot missiles a month this year, Mr. Zelensky said. Of Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon’s chief, he said that “there’s a package from the United States containing 12 missiles, and he signed it. Great. But I’ve used 35 this month.” He said he had found the other 23 elsewhere.

Ukraine is leaning on short-range defense. Its General Staff said on Tuesday that its forces had downed nearly 60 percent of Russia’s Geran-4 jet drones on average over the past three months, and up to 80 percent of jet drones in some attacks. Strengthening short-range air defense is “a key priority amid a shortage of surface-to-air guided missiles,” it said, in Ukrinform’s translation: anti-aircraft systems such as the Gepard, Skynex and Skyranger, interceptor drones and mobile teams with shoulder-fired missiles. “Trials of new interceptors are underway,” it said, and work “is ongoing to reduce the cost of countering such aerial threats.”

The next test is diplomatic. Ukraine’s agenda for technical talks with Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi, expected in the first half of November, includes “de-escalation steps regarding energy, as well as at sea,” Mr. Zelensky said, Ukrinform reported; whether they take place, he said, now depends “on the U.S. side.” In the south, a local ceasefire around Oleshky, due by Ukraine’s account to run until the evening of Nov. 1, had passed 30 hours with no incidents recorded, Russia’s human-rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, said on Wednesday.