Russia launched 948 drones at Ukraine on 24 March, the largest single drone attack since the full-scale invasion began in February 20221. Strikes hit 11 oblasts in rare daytime waves, killing two people in Ivano-Frankivsk, two in Poltava, and one each in Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Kharkiv.
The barrage dwarfed the previous record of 430 drones and 68 missiles on 13-14 March and continued a trajectory that saw 9,616 kamikaze drones launched on 17 March alone. Daytime attacks are operationally different from night strikes: thermal detection works best against dark skies, while cluttered urban environments in daylight demand radar-guided interception instead. Russia appears to be testing whether saturating both halves of the 24-hour cycle can overwhelm Ukrainian air defence scheduling.
Zelenskyy told the BBC two days later that 800 US-made interceptors were consumed in three days of the Iran war, against 700 Ukraine received over its entire winter. With American production at 60 to 65 Patriot rounds per month, replacing those 800 takes a full year. Russia's spring offensive launched in the window of maximum interceptor scarcity.
In Lviv, a UNESCO World Heritage city 750 kilometres from the front line, the 16th-century Bernardine monastery lost its tower and the Church of St Mary Magdalene had its windows shattered2. UNESCO dispatched experts to assess the cultural damage. The reach of the barrage, far beyond the eastern front, signals a deliberate effort to stretch Ukrainian air defences across the country's entire depth.
