No fewer than three Ukrainian drones over Moscow have been intercepted by Russian forces, in an attack that wounded one person, damaged two office blocks and briefly forced the closure of an airport in the city.
On Sunday, the Russian defense ministry accused Kyiv of carrying out the attack, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refrained from commenting on the drone strikes but did issue a warning that war is coming to Russian territory.
In a message on Telegram which was sighted by Africa Today News, New York, the defence ministry said: ‘The Kyiv regime’s attempted terrorist attack with unmanned aerial vehicles on objects in the city of Moscow was thwarted’.
It said one of the drones was shot down, while two, “suppressed by electronic warfare”, crashed into a building complex in Moscow’s business district.
No flights went into or out of the Vnukovo airport on the southern outskirts of the city for about an hour, according to TASS, and the air space over Moscow and the outlying regions was temporarily closed for any aircraft.
Africa Today News, New York can confirm that those restrictions have since been lifted.
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Authorities also briefly closed a street for traffic near the site of the crash in the Moscow City area.
President Vladimir Putin, who was in his hometown of Saint Petersburg at the time of the attempted attacks for meetings with African leaders and a naval celebration, was briefed, his spokesman said.
Separately, the Russian defence ministry said it had also successfully thwarted an overnight attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, by 25 Ukrainian drones that Moscow said it had either shot down or forced to crash. Nobody had been hurt and no damage was caused in the Crimea, it added.
Ukrainian officials did not acknowledge the attacks but Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address: “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”
“Ukraine is getting stronger,” he added.
A Ukrainian air force spokesman also did not claim responsibility but said the Russian people were seeing the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The attack was the fourth such attempt at a strike on Moscow this month and the third this week, heightening concerns about the capital’s vulnerability to attacks as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.
It also comes several weeks into a Ukrainian counteroffensive to take back territory of the country captured by Russia since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.