"During the past night [from 17:00 GMT on April 17 to 05:00 GMT on April 18] … air defence alert systems intercepted and destroyed 258 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]," the ministry said in a statement.
The drones were shot down over the territories of the Astrakhan, Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov, Samara, Saratov, Smolensk, Tambov, and Ulyanovsk regions, the Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of Crimea, and over the waters of the Azov and Black seas.