Have you missed the latest events on the war in Ukraine? 20 Minutes takes stock for you every evening. Here is the gist of this Sunday, May 17, 2026, on the 1,544th day of the conflict.
Fact of the day
Russia suffered one of the most massive Ukrainian attacks since the start of the conflict, mobilizing around 600 drones and killing four people on its territory. The attack took place three days after Russian bombings which left around twenty dead in kyiv and to which the Ukrainian authorities had promised to respond.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its anti-aircraft defenses had shot down 556 Ukrainian drones overnight in 14 regions, then 30 more in the morning. The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobiov, said that a woman and two men were killed around the capital. In the Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, a man was killed overnight in the Chebekino district, during a Ukrainian drone attack on a truck, according to regional authorities.
For its part, the Ukrainian Air Force claimed on Sunday to have intercepted 279 Russian attack drones and decoys out of a total of 287 launched during the night.
Today’s statement
« Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and its attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified »
Volodymyr Zelensky’s message published on social networks was accompanied by a video showing what appears to be a refinery on fire, without AFP being able to verify its authenticity.
“Kiev’s priority” remains the constant strengthening of the use of long-range strike capabilities,” Robert Brovdi, known as “Madyar”, commander of the army’s unmanned systems forces, told AFP Ukrainian. According to kyiv, this Ukrainian attack on the Russian capital is the most “important since the start of the invasion.”
The number of the day
80. In Moscow itself, more than 80 drones were intercepted and a strike left 12 injured, “mostly workers” on a construction site near a refinery, according to the mayor, Sergei Sobyanin. “The refinery’s production was not disrupted. Three residential buildings were damaged,” he said. If the capital region is regularly the subject of drone attacks, Moscow itself, located more than 400 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, is more rarely targeted.
Today’s trend
Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have stalled. A three-day truce allowed a break in the massive bombings away from the front on the occasion of commemorations in Russia of the end of the Second World War.
All our file on the war in Ukraine
But the attacks resumed as soon as the ceasefire negotiated under the aegis of American President Donald Trump expired on the night of Monday to Tuesday. The negotiations, under American mediation, have been on hold since the start of the war in the Middle East, triggered at the end of February by Israeli-American bombings on Iran.
