Ukraine has launched one of its largest drone attacks on Moscow as it continues a major incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Russian authorities said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that air defense forces shot down 11 drones over Moscow and the surrounding region, some of them downed over the city of Podolsk, about 38 km south of the Kremlin.
“This is one of the largest attempts at drone attacks on Moscow,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app. No damage or casualties have been reported, he said in an earlier message.
Drone attacks on Moscow are rare. Ukraine’s latest attempt to target the Russian capital appears to have been larger than a previous attack in May 2023, in which at least eight drones were shot down.
Wednesday’s barrage was part of a wider attack on Russia, with the Defense Ministry saying its air defense units destroyed 45 Ukrainian drones in total overnight.
In addition to the 11 drones destroyed over the Moscow region, 23 drones were shot down in the border Bryansk region, six in the border Belgorod region, three in the Kaluga region, which borders the Moscow region to the northeast, and two in the besieged Kursk region, the ministry said.
Russia’s state news agency RIA also reported that two drones were destroyed over the Tula region, which borders the Moscow region to the north.
After the assault on Moscow, temporary restrictions were imposed overnight at Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports, but all three resumed normal operations later on Wednesday.
“If Ukraine targets cities, how many drones will get through, what effect will they have on Russian strategic thinking, because these cities are all very well protected, especially the capital? So it remains to be seen whether this is a departure or just a one-off operation by the Ukrainian military command,” Alex Gatopoulos, Al Jazeera’s defense editor, said from kyiv.
Lightning raid
Alexei Smirnov, acting regional governor of Kursk, said one person was killed and two injured after a Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive on a vehicle.
The injured residents went to hospital and received medical treatment, but an unnamed woman “died on the spot” in Bolshesoldatsky district, he said in a Telegram message, and reported that two Ukrainian missiles were shot down over Kursk.
The Ukrainian drone attack comes as Russia struggles to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk, two weeks after the surprise incursion.
Hundreds of prisoners were taken and tens of thousands of civilians were forced to evacuate following Ukraine’s lightning raid on Kursk on August 6.
Ukraine now claims control of 1,263 km² (488 miles²) of Kursk territory, including 93 settlements.
Russia’s election commission announced it was postponing elections in seven Kursk municipalities, saying on Telegram that the elections would take place once there was “full guarantee of voter safety.”
On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces said they had struck an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system based in the Rostov region in southern Russia.
Ukrainian drones also struck an oil warehouse in Rostov on Sunday, sparking a massive fire. Hundreds of Russian firefighters were still battling the blaze on Wednesday.
“Does this mean a change of course in Ukraine’s strategic thinking? They have successfully targeted Russia’s industrial capacity to wage war,” Al Jazeera’s Gatopoulos said.
“You see that the Rostov-on-Don oil refinery is still burning after four days, with its production reduced to a fraction of what it was before,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russian forces continued their offensive in eastern Ukraine, claiming on Tuesday to have taken control of what was described as the strategically important logistics hub of Niu-York, as part of a broader offensive aimed at capturing the entire Donetsk region.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said on Wednesday that its forces had taken control of the Zhelanne settlement in the Pokrovsk district of Donetsk.
The Ukrainian military said on Wednesday it had destroyed 50 of the 69 attack drones launched by Russia in a nighttime strike. One of them had entered Ukraine from Belarus and the other had returned to Russia, it said.
The attack also involved two ballistic missiles and a cruise missile. The military said it shot down only the latter.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, vowed on Wednesday that there would be no negotiations between the two countries until Ukraine is completely defeated.
“The empty chatter of the intermediaries that no one appointed about the wonderful peace is over,” he said on Telegram. “There will be no more negotiations until the complete defeat of the enemy.”
