India, June 2 -- Before first light on Tuesday, air raid alerts were still active across seven Russian regions when Moscow announced what its Defense Ministry called its largest overnight drone intercept of the current escalation: 148 fixed-wing Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles destroyed between 8 p.m. Monday and 7 a.m. Tuesday, across a sweep of Russian territory stretching from the Bryansk and Smolensk forests in the west to the Azov and Black Seas in the south.

The statement, published Tuesday morning by the Russian Defense Ministry and cited by RIA Novosti, named ten operational zones: the Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Kursk, Oryol, Rostov, and Smolensk regions, the Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of Crimea, and offshore over bo...