Ukraine says it downed 114 of 137 Russian drones, as a Zaporizhzhia bridge is hit

Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched 137 attack drones overnight into Tuesday, and that defences had shot down or suppressed 114 of them by 8 am. Forty-nine of the drones were jet-powered Shaheds. The rest of the package, on the Air Force list, included Gerbera, Banderol or Dan-T, and Parodiya decoys. Hits were recorded at 17 locations. Debris from downed drones fell at four more. Several drones were still in Ukrainian airspace when the morning bulletin was issued, so the 114 is a preliminary count, not a closed one.

The launch map is specific. Drones left Oryol, Kursk, Shatalovo, Millerovo and Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Russia, occupied Donetsk, Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea, and the Sea of Azov. The attack began at 6 pm on 5 October. A package that starts in the evening and is still being counted at 8 am is a night-long raid, not a single wave. The 49 jet-powered Shaheds are the line that changes the interception problem. A propeller Shahed and a jet-powered one do not offer the same warning time to a mobile group.

In Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces hit a bridge across the Dnipro on Tuesday morning. Five people were injured, including two Red Cross workers who were on their way to work. RBC-Ukraine carried that toll with the Air Force bulletin. A bridge strike and a drone package are not automatically the same weapon. The Air Force counted drone hits at 17 sites and did not, in the summary, attribute the bridge to a Shahed. The civilian detail that is firm is the five injured, two of them aid workers on a commute.

The same morning, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of a separate, larger Russian strike still in preparation, and the Air Force later reported three Tu-160 bombers leaving Belaya in Irkutsk. That warning looks forward. The 137-drone count looks back, at a raid already flown. Treating them as one event double-counts the night. Russia, for its part, said Ukraine had sent more than 650 drones toward Moscow in the same period, with two people killed in the Moscow region. The two directions ran together. They are different ledgers: 137 launched at Ukraine on the Air Force's count, more than 650 launched at Moscow on the mayor's count.

Seventeen impact sites, against 114 downed or suppressed and 137 launched, leaves a remainder that the Air Force has not fully assigned. Some of the unaccounted drones were still airborne at 8 am. Some will be decoys that never needed a hit to do their job, which is to pull interceptors off the jet-powered Shaheds. Parodiya is listed as a decoy. A package that includes decoys by name is built to inflate the launch count and to spend Ukrainian ammunition. The 49 jet-powered airframes are the ones the interception rate has to be judged against, and the Air Force did not break the 114 down by type.

The Red Cross injuries are the part of the morning that does not depend on the drone tally. Two staff on the way to work, hurt at a Dnipro crossing in Zaporizhzhia, sit outside the argument about interception percentages. The bridge is a piece of civilian infrastructure on a river that already shapes the southern front. Damage figures for the span itself had not been published with the injury count.

The next bulletin will either close the 137 or raise it, and it will say whether the drones still airborne at 8 am struck. Until then the standing figures are 137 launched, 49 of them jet-powered, 114 downed or suppressed, 17 impact sites, four debris sites, and five people hurt at the Zaporizhzhia bridge.