This photograph shows a Ukrainian long-range drone launched by servicemen of the 9th Kairos Battalion of the “Madyar’s Birds” from an undisclosed location in Ukraine, on May 16, 2026. (Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow again in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to the city’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, marking the fourth consecutive day of Ukrainian long-range attacks on the Russian capital.
Sobyanin said in posts to Telegram that at least 15 Ukrainian drones were intercepted en route to the capital overnight, with no damage or casualties reported. Emergency responders were dispatched to sites where drones crashed or debris fell, Sobyanin said.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced on Telegram that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at two of the capital’s four international airports — Vnukovo Airport to the southwest of Moscow and Zhukovsky Airport to the southeast of the city.
The drones targeting Moscow were among at least 330 Ukrainian drones reported to be shot down by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday night and into Thursday morning.
Rosaviatsiya said that flight restrictions were also introduced at airports in the cities of Sochi and Gelendzhik on Russia’s Black Sea coast, plus in the city of Krasnodar in southern Russia. All three cities are in the Krasnodar Krai region.
Regional Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said in a post to Telegram that a “drone hazard” warning was in effect for the entire territory.
Drone debris, Kondratyev said, hit an apartment building in the city of Krasnodar resulting in a fire and injuring two people. Several homes in the district of Seversky, to the southeast of Krasnodar, were also damaged by a drone attack with one person injured, Kondratyev said.
But Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Telegram that a major oil refinery in the region was also targeted in the overnight attack.
The Afipsky Refinery, Kovalenko said, “has been damaged and a fire broke out on its premises.” The facility sits just south of Krasnodar and has already been attacked twice by Ukrainian drones — first in February 2025 and again in March 2026.
Russia continued its own long-range strikes into Ukraine overnight into Thursday morning. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched two ballistic missiles and 221 drones in its latest barrage, of which 195 drones were intercepted or otherwise suppressed.
Both missiles and 21 drones impacted across nine locations, the air force said.
Kremlin L and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia. Moscow, May 16, 2026, (Photo by Feng Kaihua/Xinhua via Getty Images)
(LONDON )– Russian air defenses shot down at least 22 Ukrainian drones heading toward Moscow overnight and into Wednesday morning, according to the city’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, marking the third consecutive day of Ukrainian long-range strikes on the Russian capital.
The latest attacks on Moscow were part of a large wave of Ukrainian drone strikes launched across southern and western Russia, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, which said in a post to Telegram that its forces downed at least 326 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Sobyanin said emergency services had been dispatched to sites where intercepted drones and debris fell. The mayor did not note any damage or casualties caused by any of the attacks reported since Monday. Since Monday, Sobyanin has reported the downing of at least 39 Ukrainian drones heading toward the capital.
It is unclear whether any drones penetrated Russian air defenses. Russian officials generally attribute any damage or casualties to debris from interceptions rather than successful impacts, even in cases when video footage shows Ukrainian munitions hitting targets.
Elsewhere, local officials reported attacks on industrial facilities in the Samara, Rostov, Vladimir and Cheboksary regions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram that a Ukrainian-designed FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile was used in the attack on Cheboksary. The strike hit “a military plant” used to produce “components for drones and missiles,” Zelenskyy added.
Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian munitions hit major oil refineries in Samara and Vladimir regions.
A drone alert was also declared in the Omsk region of Siberia — more than 1,800 miles from Ukraine — by Governor Vitaly Khotsenko, citing a warning from the Defense Ministry.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced temporary flight restrictions for at least 10 airports in southern and western Russia overnight into Wednesday morning, according to statements posted on its official Telegram channel.
The restrictions affected airports stretching from Sochi on the Black Sea coast to Perm, close to the Ural Mountains and more than 900 miles away from Ukraine.
Ukraine has been rapidly expanding its drone campaign against Russia — which officials in Kyiv refer to as “long-range sanctions” — in recent months, according to data published by Ukrainian officials and by the Russian Defense Ministry.
May saw the Russian Defense Ministry claim the shooting down of 9,418 Ukrainian drones — the highest monthly total ever reported by the ministry. And in Moscow, Sobyanin reported the shooting down of at least 329 Ukrainian drones heading toward the Russian capital the same month — just short of the record monthly high of 398 claimed interceptions in March.
Zelenskyy has been clear in his goal to expand Kyiv’s strikes deep inside Russia, targeting energy facilities, military factories and other strategic targets. “Our long-range impact on Russian logistics, Russian oil refining and Russian military production is also significant,” Zelenskyy said while visiting Estonia on Tuesday. “The Russian budget is in tatters. We must keep up the pressure and bring Russia back onto the diplomatic track,” he added.
Russia continued its own long-range strike campaign into Ukraine overnight into Wednesday. Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 207 drones into the country in its latest barrage, of which 181 were intercepted or otherwise suppressed.
ABC News cannot independently verify the data released by either Russia or Ukraine. It is possible that both sides may seek to exaggerate the effectiveness of their air defenses, or to amplify the attacks against them as proof that their enemies are not interested in pursuing a peace deal, experts have suggested.
Moscow publishes only the number of Ukrainian drones and other projectiles it claims to have intercepted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses the press at an informal meeting of European Union leaders on April 23, 2026 in Ayia Napa, Cyprus. (Photo by Byron Smith/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Three people were killed overnight as Russia continued its aerial barrage of Ukraine, firing at least 166 drones, Ukrainian officials said, as Russian officials also claimed a Ukrainian attack targeting Moscow and other regions.
“At least three people were killed, including a pregnant 22-year-old woman, in Chuhuiv, as a result of Russia’s overnight terrorist attacks on Kharkiv and its region,” Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said on social media.
The Ukrainian air force said at least 146 Russian drones had been destroyed.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a series of posts on Telegram on Tuesday morning that at least 11 drones had been destroyed by Russian air defenses near the capital. Emergency services were working at the sites where each crashed, he said.
Russia’s defenses intercepted and destroyed overnight at least 140 Ukrainian drones in several regions, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, according to the state-affiliated Tass news service.
The overnight attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again said Kyiv was seeking to open a diplomatic path to end Russia’s war.
Zelenskyy told The Guardian in an interview published on Tuesday that Roman Abramovich, a prominent Russian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had visited Kyiv in May.
“I told this businessman, who came to deliver the message about a potential framework of diplomatic negotiations, that we were ready to speak from the very beginning,” Zelenskyy said on social media on Tuesday, recounting what he had told The Guardian. “We didn’t want this war, and we want to stop it.”
Zelenskyy’s office last week published an open letter to Putin in which he asked for a meeting, saying, “The front line today is the line from which diplomacy must begin.”
The Ukrainian president said many Russians were “becoming less comfortable” with the effects of the war on daily life, the economy and international relations.
“You will not have enough money or political capital to keep buying the loyalty of Russians the way you have for the past 26 years,” Zelenskyy told Putin in the letter. “And we will do everything we can to ensure that the world helps bring that moment closer.”
Putin last week again said he believed there was “a desire to end this military conflict peacefully” but stopped short of saying he would meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, according to a transcript released by the Russian president’s office.
The overnight strike targeting Ukraine’s Kharkiv region injured at least 15 people and damaged residential buildings, along with a church and other civilian infrastructure, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
Russia also targeted emergency responders in the Dnipro region, the ministry said.
“After firefighters had extinguished a blaze caused by an earlier strike, their vehicle came under another Russian attack while returning to base,” the ministry said. “Fortunately, no one was injured.”
Rescue teams continue water pumping and search operations for the remaining two missing individuals inside a flooded cave on June 3, 2026 in Xaisomboun, Laos. (Photo by the Laos Rescue Volunteers for People via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — International rescuers have indefinitely suspended the search for two gold miners believed trapped in a cave in Laos, nearly three weeks after they were reported missing with five others who were rescued, officials said.
International dive teams that converged on the country’s Xaisomboun province, where monsoon flood waters trapped the miners last month, were heading back home on Sunday, a search coordinator told ABC News.
The cave system, according to the coordinator, has become too unstable to safely carry on with the search. The rescue coordinator said the hope of finding the two remaining miners is now very low.
While water in the flooded subterranean labyrinth has been pumped out and lowered to a manageable level, the coordinator said the entrance to the cave has become too unstable for rescuers to safely proceed with the operation.
A local rescue team will keep pumping water from the cave in hopes of a miracle, the coordinator said.
The operation was halted after rescuers explored a newly discovered 196-foot-deep shaft they had hoped would lead them to a chamber where they suspected the two miners might be. But no sign of the miners was reported.
A group of seven illegal gold miners entered the cave on May 19 and became trapped when monsoon rains flooded the cave’s entrance, rescuers said.
The rescue team was able to pump enough water out of the system for four miners to crawl out of the muddy abyss on May 30, authorities said. A day earlier, a fifth miner was able to crawl and swim out of the cave after he was taught how to scuba dive, rescuers said.
In an interview with ABC News last week, Josh Richards, an Australian diver who was part of the rescue operation, said the two remaining missing miners could be in a sixth chamber, past the one where the five other miners were located.
But Richards said some of the rescued miners told officials that there were only six of them trapped in the cave, including one who managed to extract himself at the outset of the emergency and alert authorities.
Richards said that one possible theory is that eight miners entered the cave and three got out on their own and went into hiding because their mining activities are illegal in Laos and subject to prosecution.
US Coast Guard dive team is shown in Hope Town in the Bahamas as the investigation into the disappearance of Lynette Hooker continues. (ABC)
(NEW YORK) — The daughter of Lynette Hooker, an American woman who went overboard in the Bahamas and vanished two months ago, is grateful a U.S. Coast Guard dive team is on the scene conducting new searches.
“She has to be somewhere, so all the help that we could get, it’s greatly appreciated,” Hooker’s daughter, Karli Aylesworth, told ABC News.
The Coast Guard Investigative Service, which is leading the investigation, received permission from the Bahamas to send U.S divers to areas that were previously not searched, according to multiple U.S. officials.
This search comes after forensic evidence found on electronic devices belonging to Lynette Hooker’s husband, Brian Hooker, led investigators to new areas of interest, officials said.
A U.S. official told ABC News that what Brian Hooker told investigators does not match the GPS data recovered from his devices.
Aylesworth told ABC News she doubts her stepfather Brian Hooker’s story and said she’s not spoken with him since the day after her mother went missing.
Aylesworth said she’s hopeful the new search points investigators in the right direction.
“I’m happy they were able to get Brian’s location and discover new areas to look,” she said. “… I know they’re working very hard.”
Lynette Hooker has been missing since the evening of April 4. Brian Hooker told authorities that after the couple departed Hope Town on their dinghy to head to their yacht, called the “Soulmate,” bad weather caused her to go overboard.
Brian Hooker was arrested on April 8 and questioned by police. He was released on April 13 without charges.
On April 14, Brian Hooker told ABC News that he was staying in the Bahamas with a “sole focus” of finding his wife. But hours after that interview, Brian Hooker left the Bahamas, with his attorney saying he wanted to be with his terminally ill mother.
Aylesworth said of her missing mother, “I hope she’s just in Cuba or something, just needing a break from life, living it up. But I feel like at this time, she would have at least contacted my grandma and me. So I don’t, at this point, I don’t really have much faith that she’s out there still alive.”
She added that if she could speak to her mother now, she’d tell her, “I just hope you’re still out there. I have doubts with how long it’s been, but I love you and I hope I can see you again.”
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung takes an oath during his inauguration at the National Assembly on June 04, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Anthony Wallace – Pool/Getty Images)
(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party swept nationwide local elections Wednesday, tightening President Lee Jae Myung’s grip on power one year into his term, though the conservative opposition captured Seoul’s mayor’s office.
The vote drew 61% turnout, the highest for a local election in three decades.
Lee enters his second year Thursday with approval ratings around 60%, according to South Korea’s major pollsters. That is the second-highest at the one-year mark since 1987, behind only former President Moon Jae-in.
When South Koreans elected Lee a year ago, they did so in the wreckage of a constitutional crisis after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, vowing to “eradicate the anti-state forces.”
He sent troops toward the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting it down. The attempt failed within hours, and Yoon was impeached and removed by the Constitutional Court four months later, triggering the snap election that made Lee president.
Governing out loud
Lee has made the presidency unusually public. He live-streams weekly cabinet meetings, a first in Korean history, and his office briefs on camera far more than its predecessor.
Lee also uses social media to announce policy, rebut coverage he disputes, take questions and air his opinions — often without the vetting a formal statement would get. Aides call it a deliberate effort to reach citizens directly rather than through the traditional layers of staff that usually filter a president.
“Unlike politicians before him, he’s citizen-friendly — clearly distinct,” said Park Myoung-ho, a political science professor at Dongguk University.
His style has drawn criticism, however. In May, Lee used social media to attack Starbucks Korea over a promotion that critics linked to a 1980 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, branding the company “low-grade profiteers” guilty of “gutter-level behavior.”
“Given how much power a president holds, it’s too direct and too unfiltered,” said Lee Hyun-woo, who teaches political process at Sogang University and warned that the president’s posts are often misread because Koreans are used to presidents speaking in measured, formal language.
A record-breaking market
The benchmark KOSPI, which bottomed out near 2,300 in April 2025 after President Donald Trump’s tariffs, has surged to a record high above 8,700, blowing past Lee’s campaign pledge to reach 5,000. The rally has been catalyzed by a global boom in semiconductors and AI infrastructure that has lifted companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
But rising share prices have not reached many ordinary households across the country and home prices around Seoul are starting to climbing again and is testing one of Lee’s central promises.
Walking the line between Washington and Beijing
Lee’s central foreign-policy bet has been that South Korea no longer has to choose between its U.S. alliance and its largest trading partner, China — an approach his government calls “national-interest-centered pragmatism” — and within seven months of taking office, he had held summits with the leaders of the United States, China and Japan.
“On foreign policy, he’s done better than expected,” said Shin Yul, a political science and diplomacy professor at Myongji University.
But the results have been mixed. Lee repaired ties with Japan, but his January state visit to Beijing largely fell flat.
His pragmatism faced a major test in February when the war between Iran and a U.S.-Israeli coalition threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the route for much of South Korea’s oil imports.
Lee’s government leaned on national reserves, increased purchases of U.S. crude and secured replacement supplies from outside the region. A senior presidential official said the effort, together with the market’s resilience, helped keep Lee’s approval ratings steady through the spring.
Two presidents, two reckonings
In February, a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon to life in prison for the martial-law attempt; his former defense minister got 30 years. To Lee’s supporters it was accountability for an assault on democracy. To Yoon’s base, it felt like political revenge.
But Lee carries his own legal shadow. He took office facing five criminal trials, including corruption, subornation of perjury and illegal fund transfers to North Korea, which were all frozen once he became president.
His Democratic Party then went further by pushing a special counsel that could cancel the charges against him outright — a move Lee declined to endorse or oppose publicly.
To Shin, the silence was strategic. Lee’s side, he said, “will try to get the charges dropped,” likely using the special counsel “to pursue cancellation of the cases against him.”
The push drew public backlash and many analysts read the local-election result as a warning from voters wary of a governing party clearing its own leader.
“This may be President Lee’s Achilles’ heel,” said Park. “I suspect he himself feels a real burden over it.”
For Lee Hyun-woo, the principle is simple: “Serving well and being remembered as a great president, and paying for crimes committed in the past, are entirely separate matters.”
ABC News’ Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this report.
US Coast Guard dive team is shown in Hope Town in the Bahamas as the investigation into the disappearance of Lynette Hooker continues. (ABC)
(NEW YORK) — A U.S. Coast Guard dive team is in the Bahamas on Wednesday searching for Lynette Hooker, an American woman who went overboard and vanished nearly two months ago.
The Coast Guard Investigative Service is leading the investigation and received permission from the Bahamas to send U.S divers to areas that were previously not searched, according to multiple U.S. officials.
The new search comes after forensic evidence found on electronic devices belonging to Lynette Hooker’s husband, Brian Hooker, led investigators to new areas of interest, officials said.
A U.S. official told ABC News that what Brian Hooker told investigators does not match the GPS data recovered from his devices.
Lynette Hooker has been missing since the evening of April 4. Brian Hooker told authorities that after the couple departed Hope Town on their dinghy to head to their yacht, called the “Soulmate,” bad weather caused her to go overboard.
Brian Hooker was arrested on April 8 and questioned by police. He was released on April 13 without charges.
On April 14, Brian Hooker told ABC News that he was staying in the Bahamas with a “sole focus” of finding his wife. But hours after that interview, Brian Hooker left the Bahamas, with his attorney saying he wanted to be with his terminally ill mother.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy April 23, 2026. (Photo by Byron Smith/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukrainian drones hit one of Russia’s largest oil terminals in St. Petersburg overnight into Wednesday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, sending plumes of black smoke towering over the city as the landmark St. Petersburg International Economic Forum prepared to open.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian long-range drones struck targets including the Petersburg Oil Terminal overnight — just under 700 miles from Ukrainian territory.
The latest round of “long-range sanctions,” as officials in Kyiv refer to Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia, “yielded good results. Important facilities on Russian territory were hit last night,” Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram.
St. Petersburg is known as Russia’s “second capital,” and is a regular target of Ukrainian drone attacks given its political and economic significance, plus its role as a key export hub for Russian oil.
Video from the city showed attendees of the International Economic Forum arriving at the venue with clouds of black smoke hanging over the city.
St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said in a post to Telegram that “infrastructure facilities in the Kronstadt, Kirovsky and Krasnoselsky districts were attacked” by Ukrainian drones.
“Several facilities were damaged. Currently, efforts are underway to mitigate the consequences. Several people were injured. There were no fatalities. An operational headquarters is in operation. Forces and resources have been put on high alert,” Beglov wrote.
Conceived of as Russia’s version of Davos, the annual International Economic Forum gathers Russia’s political and business elite in St. Petersburg. Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the event also hosted many international leaders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to deliver his keynote speech to the event on Friday.
Robert Mims Cook — the head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, who is overseeing President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project and his planned triumphal arch in Washington — is set to attend the forum, which would make him the first American official to do so since 2022.
High profile radical conservative influencer Candace Owens has also been invited to speak at the forum, while the pro-Trump right-wing influencers Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are also in Russia.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, said in a post to Telegram that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport during the overnight attacks.
Temporary restrictions were also imposed on airports in the Russian cities of Saratov, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod and Pskov, Rosaviatsiya said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post to Telegram that its air defenses shot down at least 354 Ukrainian drones overnight into Wednesday morning.
Elsewhere, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said the capital also came under Ukrainian attack. The mayor said in posts to Telegram that air defenses intercepted at least 22 Ukrainian drones heading toward the capital on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Russia launches ‘horrific’ drone, missile strikes on Ukraine, killing 22: Officials
(LONDON) — At least 22 people were killed and more than 130 people injured in a large-scale overnight Russian missile and drone strike on Ukraine, officials said, with the capital Kyiv the main target of Moscow’s latest long-range barrage.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a post to Telegram that the most significant damage was wrought in Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv regions. At least six people were killed in Kyiv and 16 people — including two children — were killed in Dnipro, local Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 drones into the country, of which 40 missiles and 602 drones were intercepted or suppressed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack constituted “a completely transparent statement from Russia: if Ukraine is not protected from ballistic and other missile strikes, these attacks will continue.”
“Europe needs its own anti-ballistic defense so that this war can finally end. And we urgently need help from the United States in supplying missiles for the Patriot systems. We count on the support of our partners and on effective responses to today’s attack,” the president wrote in a post to social media.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that among the buildings damaged by the “large-scale attack” were four medical facilities.
Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, said in a post to X that the most serious damage in Kyiv was reported in the Podilskyi district, where a Russian strike collapsed a nine-story residential building. “People may still be trapped under the rubble,” Stefanchuk wrote.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post to X that Russia’s latest “horrific attack” showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror.”
“Moscow is losing on the battlefield. No number of missiles can change this,” Sybiha wrote. “What we can change is Russia’s ability to continue terror. I urge partners to act, not only condemn.”
The foreign minister called on Ukraine’s foreign backers to unlock more European funding for NATO’s PURL program through which Kyiv can obtain more American weapons and ammunition, including anti-missile defenses like the Patriot system.
Sybiha also urged partners to increase investment in Ukraine’s own long-range capabilities, “ramp up pressure on Russia through new sanctions” and advance Ukraine’s European Union membership negotiations.
“Peace efforts will only succeed when they are backed with real pressure on Moscow,” Sybiha said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post to Telegram that its forces “launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, land and sea-based weapons, including hypersonic aeroballistic missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles.”
The strike, it said, targeted “military-industrial,” fuel and transport facilities and military bases in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions. “The targets of the strike have been achieved, all designated objects have been hit,” the ministry claimed.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said it shot down at least 148 Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced temporary flight restrictions at airports in Volgograd, Kaluga, Saratov, Krasnodar and Penza during the overnight Ukrainian attacks.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Yulia Drozd and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
