New Delhi, Aug. 30 -- Through a twelve-hour operational window on Saturday, Russian air defense crews worked across seven regions and the Black Sea to intercept what the Defense Ministry described as a coordinated barrage: 85 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones shot down between 08:00 and 20:00 Moscow time.

launching drones simultaneously across multiple vectors forces Russian air defense systems to split radar coverage and electronic warfare capacity across a wide arc, reducing the probability that any single approach is fully saturated.

The Defense Ministry named six administrative regions - Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Tula, and Oryol. The Republic of Crimea and unspecified Black Sea intercepts were listed separately, indicating the ope...