At least 65 UAVs heading toward the capital have been destroyed by air defenses, Sergey Sobyanin says
Moscow is repelling a major multi-wave Ukrainian drone attack, with at least one residential high-rise damaged by falling debris, according to Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
At least 65 incoming UAVs were shot down early Tuesday by air defenses near the towns of Domodedovo, Ramenskoye and Vidnoye, southeast of the capital, Sobyanin wrote in a series of Telegram posts between 4am and 6am local time.
According to the mayor, most of the drones were intercepted outside Moscow, and only one residential building had been damaged as of 6:30am.
“At the moment, the roof of a house in Moscow is slightly damaged by falling debris from a downed UAV on Domodedovo Street,” Sobyanin wrote, adding that emergency services were working at the scene.
At least two more residential buildings were damaged in Domodedovo and Vidnoye, according to eyewitness accounts and videos circulating on social media. However, Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyev has yet to confirm the damage on the ground.
Moscow's Domodedovo and Zhukovsky international airports have announced suspension of their operations amid the drone raid.
Kiev’s last attempted major drone attack on the Russian capital took place in November when as many as 32 UAVs were shot down or intercepted over several Russian regions while heading toward Moscow.
Meanwhile, the Russian regions of Belgorod, Kursk, Kherson, and Bryansk, as well as Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic –all of which border Ukraine –have suffered the most from Kiev’s shelling and drone attacks. On Monday, at least four people were killed in a missile strike on a shopping center in Kursk, while another three civilians died in an attack on a market in Kherson Region the day before.
Kiev is increasingly resorting to terrorist tactics, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, warned last month. Ukraine will attempt to carry out strikes deep into Russian territory using drones and Western-supplied weapons, with the goal of “inflicting maximum economic damage and intimidating the population,” the top security official said.
