In the same days that Kyiv was left without its bridges, Russia faced one of the fiercest waves of Ukrainian drones since the war began. Once again they attacked several Russian regions overnight, and the most dramatic scenes came from Kaluga, about 180 kilometres south-west of Moscow. During a series of explosions a multi-storey apartment building was hit: balconies on the upper floors were damaged, and windows in neighbouring buildings cracked from the blast wave. Air defences were active over the city, and data on the damage and any injuries are still being collected.

Kaluga is not a random point on the map. On the evening of October 1 and the following night alone, Russian authorities said they had destroyed 18 drones over the Kaluga region, including some downed near Kaluga and Obninsk.

855 drones in a single day and night

The Russian Defence Ministry said that from 8 pm on October 1 to 8 am on October 2, air defences intercepted and destroyed 646 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over thirteen regions, Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. From 8 am to 8 pm the same day another 209 were reported. A total of 855 in 24 hours. For the whole previous week the ministry gave a figure of 5,031 drones downed.

These are Moscow's numbers and nobody can verify them independently. But even if they are accurate down to the last drone, they say something the Kremlin doesn't say out loud: the war that was supposed to be a "special operation" far from Russian homes now knocks on their windows every night.

Shattered glass far from the front

In Volgograd, after a strike the previous night, a fire broke out in a multi-storey apartment building in the Krasnoarmeysky district, and one person was injured and taken to hospital. In the Belgorod region, a child was injured in a drone explosion in Tomarovka, and in Shebekino a commercial building, private houses, cars and windows were damaged. Authorities in the Tula region said another nine drones were destroyed during the new night, with no injuries and no damage.

Earlier targets had been airfields, refineries, depots, industrial plants and energy infrastructure, but the latest cases show again that drones or their debris also end up in residential areas. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that on October 2, in a single night, four Russian refineries were attacked. At three of them, according to him, the main processing unit was not damaged, while at the fourth the damage was still being assessed.

The logic is clear: instead of a few drones at one target, waves passing through a dozen regions at once and stretching air defences to the limit. The bridges in Kyiv and the refineries in Russia are two sides of the same calculation, in which each army strikes the other's infrastructure. The Balkans know this scene by heart. A new wave on the night to October 3 was still under way, so the final figure for that night has not been published. How many windows will crack before the next one?