Poltava

On 24 March 2026, Poltava was hit during Russia's 948-drone barrage, the largest single drone attack of the war. Two residents were killed. The city sits roughly 350 km from the front lines, but Russia's expanding drone fleet has eliminated geographic safety margins; eleven regions were struck in daytime waves during the same assault.

Poltava has been targeted before. In September 2024, a Russian Ballistic missile struck a military academy in the city, killing 55 people in one of the war's single deadliest attacks on Ukrainian soil. The March 2026 strike targeted civilian infrastructure rather than military facilities, fitting a broader pattern of mass drone campaigns designed to exhaust Ukrainian air defences through volume.

The city of around 280,000 people is the capital of Poltava Oblast in central Ukraine. It is best known historically for the Battle of Poltava in 1709, where Peter the Great defeated Charles XII of Sweden, establishing Russia as a European great power. Three centuries later, Russian forces are striking the same city with mass-produced Iranian-designed drones.