Ukraine said its drones hit eight Russian infrastructure targets on Wednesday, 9 September, in strikes that stretched from the Arctic to the Caspian Sea. President Volodymyr Zelensky laid it out in a social media post the next morning. “Over the past 24 hours, our warriors struck eight Russian infrastructure facilities supporting the war,” he wrote.
He named six regions: Yamalo-Nenets, Dagestan, Moscow, Voronezh, Astrakhan and Bryansk. He gave no detail on the other sites.
An Arctic target
The most distant hit was in Yamalo-Nenets, inside the Arctic Circle and more than 2,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. National Security Journal described it as the furthest strike from the front line since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said they hit the Novy Urengoy and Purovsky gas condensate processing plants. “Until today, the area was considered a safe rear zone for the aggressor,” the forces said. Together the two plants produce almost 33 million tons of gas per year.
A Caspian port
Far to the south, drones struck the Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port in Dagestan. The Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said its long-range FP1 drones were used. Makhachkala is Russia’s only ice-free deep-water port in the region, and it can work year-round. Over the first eight months of the year it handled about 3.2 million tons of cargo, more than 2 million of it oil. Iran has sent Russia Shahed drones across the Caspian, and the port matters for receiving them.
A fire broke out in the port soon after the attack. Damage was still being assessed. Ukraine’s special forces said harm to the port’s oil side directly limits Russia’s ability to move and transfer energy cargo across the Caspian.
What Moscow and Kyiv reported
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it downed 448 Ukrainian drones overnight over 16 regions, including occupied Crimea. Ukraine’s air defenses reportedly shot down 128 Shahed drones in the same period, while Russian strikes hit at least 13 locations across the country. A Russian drone killed two people at the Moldovan border earlier that day.
Zelensky said earlier in the week that the war is unlikely to end before the freezing winter. Every winter since the invasion, Russia has targeted Ukrainian energy facilities, causing power cuts and heating failures.
