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Five drones were shot down over the suburbs of Moscow around dawn on Tuesday, authorities said, causing no casualties or damage but marking at least the third drone incident this year and bringing Russia’s war in Ukraine closer to its own capital.
In video footage shared on social media, explosions could be heard in New Moscow, a large built-up southern neighbourhood close to the capital, while other footage showed clouds of black smoke billowing over the suburb. The videos could not be immediately verified.
“Today there was another attempted attack by Ukrainian drones in New Moscow and Moscow region,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. “So far, the attacks have been repelled by air defence forces, and all detected drones have been eliminated.”
One of the drones appeared to have targeted a military facility, crashing on an army base located in Kubinka near Moscow, the RIA state news agency cited emergency services as saying.
The Russian defence ministry said it had shot down five drones in total on Tuesday morning. Four were shot down by air defences in New Moscow, it said, while one was “suppressed using electromagnetic warfare” and crashed in Odintsovo, west of the capital.
The defence ministry called it a “terrorist attack” and blamed it on Kyiv. It said there were no casualties or damage as a result of the attack.
Flights to and from Moscow’s southern Vnukovo airport, one of its three main airports, were suspended for security reasons from 5am local time, and restarted three hours later, the mayor said.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the attacks were sponsored by the west and were therefore “international terrorism”, since they targeted “an area where civilian infrastructure is located”.
Russia regularly attacks civilian infrastructure in Ukraine with drones and missiles, killing and injuring people in the capital and in cities across the country. The drones and missiles often attack Kyiv and other cities in waves and target residential buildings.
In his nightly address on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian drones had attacked the local office of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, in northern Sumy region, as well as a residential building. Three people were killed in the attack and 21 others were wounded.
Ukraine did not immediately comment on the Moscow drone incidents on Tuesday. As a general policy, Kyiv refrains from confirming or denying strikes inside Russia. The incursions are, however, in line with Ukraine’s “shaping operations”, incidents which are less intended to cause actual damage than to distract the enemy, and rattle public opinion.
Such tactics “shape” the battlefield while Ukraine presses on with a counteroffensive on the ground, aiming to win back occupied territory.
Similar incidents took place earlier this year. In late May, two people suffered minor injuries after a number of drones crashed into residential buildings in Moscow’s south-west.
In a separate incident in early May, two drones were shot down over a Kremlin building, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of attempting to assassinate Russian president Vladimir Putin.