Drone attack on Moscow: Ukrainian jet drones break through the capital's air defence rings

After the latest drone attack on Moscow, the city has, in the view of Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, lost its “security guarantee” of a quiet life. Brovdi commands the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) of the Ukrainian armed forces and wrote on his social media: “From now on, Moscow never sleeps. The one-sided guarantee of a quiet life in Patriki and its surroundings (the Patriarch's Ponds district on Moscow's Garden Ring, one of the most expensive and prestigious districts of Moscow; editor's note) has been cancelled”. He added a photo showing the wing of a drone bearing the words “Moscow never sleeps”.

Magyar’s poetry:
Moscow never sleeps from now on.
Version 17.05 — the odds are now even: the one-sided subscription to a peaceful life on Patriarch’s Ponds and its outskirts has been revoked.
Eustace to Alexei Grigorovich: it matters how you enter the right conversation, but… pic.twitter.com/MpUpFsXkZx— 414 Magyar’s Birds (@414magyarbirds) May 17, 2026

On that day, Ukraine sent well over 1,000 drones towards Russia. Together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, specialists of the SBU Special Operations Centre “Alfa” attacked the Moscow region as well as the infrastructure and air defence systems of the “Belbek” military airfield in Crimea. Also involved were the 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade, the 107th Rocket Artillery Brigade from Kremenchuk, the 19th Missile Brigade “Saint Barbara” and the 1st Unmanned Systems Centre.

Ukrainian Bars low cost cruise missile spotted flying over Russia’s capital, Moscow, early this morning. pic.twitter.com/1JlIvm0D9l— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) May 17, 2026

The following targets were hit in the Moscow area:

• the “Angstrem” plant in Zelenograd, a semiconductor supplier to the Russian defence complex that is subject to US sanctions;
• the Moscow oil refinery;
• the “Sonechorskaya” fuel loading station and
• the “Volodarskaya” fuel loading station.

The strike on the loading stations is attracting particular interest from analysts. They are part of a pipeline ring around Moscow that is more than 400 kilometres long. Through it, oil products such as petrol, diesel and jet fuel reach customers from the refineries in Moscow, Ryazan and Kstovo in the greater Moscow area. Among other things, the tanker lorries supplying filling stations in and around Moscow also depart from the loading stations.

It is expected that Ukraine will continue trying to shut down this ring or at least disrupt its operation.

BARS-FS and BARS-CM jet drones in the drone attack on Moscow

Drones of Ukrainian design were used against Moscow, including the An-196 Lutiy, Firepoint FP-1 and FP-2, BARS-FS and BARS-CM Gladiator. The two jet drones BARS-FS and BARS-CM were shown publicly on 11 May in Kyiv – at the signing of a letter of intent with which the defence ministers of Germany and Ukraine, Boris Pistorius and Mykhailo Fedorov, intend to establish a joint defence cluster called “Brave Germany”.

The main difference between BARS-FS and BARS-CM is likely to be the ratio of payload to range. Ukraine already pursued this strategy with the Firepoint FP-1 and FP-2 drones.

Bars is powered by a KingTech K-450G4+ turbojet engine from Taiwan. It generates up to 45 kilograms of thrust while consuming 1.1 kilograms of fuel per minute. The cruise missile or drone reaches up to 800 km/h, has a range of 700 to 800 kilometres and carries a warhead of 50 to 100 kilograms. These performance figures, however, are based on Russian estimates.

Several components handle navigation and control: a POK-T satellite navigation module, an OEM719 global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver from Canadian company Novatel with an expansion module, a Cube Orange+ flight control computer from Australian company Cubepilot, a Chinese-made Nanoradar NRA24 radar altimeter and an eight-element TUALAJ 8600 CRPA antenna system from Turkish manufacturer Tualcom.

Using active antenna arrays, CRPA antennas form a directional reception pattern. The TUALAJ 8600 processes all common GNSS signals, namely GPS L1/L2/L5/L6 plus compatibility with M-code, GLONASS G1/G2, Galileo E1/E5a/E6 and BeiDou B1/B2a/B3.

What Russian air defence intercepted

Russian air defence nevertheless remains functional, as the reported shoot-downs show. Initially, Russian reports spoke of 586 drones intercepted over all of Russia, 85 of them heading for Moscow. In the end, the Russian Ministry of Defence stated that 1,054 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones had been shot down within 24 hours on 17 May. This was the first time that the number of long-range drones shot down by Russian forces within 24 hours exceeded 1,000.

Massiver Drohnenangriff auf Russland: Das Land, insbesondere Moskau, wurde in der Nacht von einer der schwersten ukrainischen Angriffswellen seit Kriegsbeginn ins Visier genommen.
Trotz Verbot stellten Einwohner Bilder der Angriffe ins Netz.🧵 pic.twitter.com/GcedRNaaeQ— Anna (@AnnaDeMilanese) May 17, 2026

“The capital is considered the city in the country best protected by air defence. The massive Ukrainian attacks are therefore an attempt to demonstrate that the measures taken by the Russian military and political leadership are not working”— a Russian commentator