One woman was killed in a Moscow suburb and several people were injured after Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on central Russia overnight, forcing the capital to suspend flights at key international airports.
The attack, one of the largest inside Russia in recent months and the first to lead to a publicly acknowledged death in the Moscow area, follows a string of deadly Russian strikes across Ukraine in response to Kyiv’s lightning invasion of the Kursk region of Russia.
The Russian defence ministry claimed to have intercepted 144 drones over the country, including 20 over the Moscow region.
One drone smashed into a residential building in the Ramensky suburb of the capital, killing a 46-year-old woman, injuring four others and damaging 54 of the building’s 102 apartments, according to the Moscow region governor, Andrei Vorobyov.
Although state media reported that damage was caused by fragments from an intercepted drone, videos shared on social media appeared to show a direct hit, with a sudden, massive explosion rocking the middle of the multi-storey apartment block at night.
“There was wreckage of the drone left on the ground, which needs to be cleared,” Vorobyov said on his Telegram channel after a visit to the site. “For safety reasons, we have decided to evacuate the residents of five neighbouring houses.”
He said a drone also hit an apartment on the ninth floor of another residential building in the same area, injuring one person.
Dozens of flights were suspended for several hours after three of Moscow’s major international airports were closed. Almost 50 flights were redirected from Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports to other airports, the Tass state news agency said, quoting Rosaviatsiya, the federal agency for air transport.
Pieces of an intercepted drone fell on the runway of Zhukovsky airport, said the Mash Telegram channel, which is known for its ties to law enforcement. It shared a video apparently filmed from inside the airport at night showing a fire on the runway outside.
By 08.00 local time, restrictions on the airports had been lifted, Rosaviatsiya said.
Some flights were also suspended at the airport in Kazan, capital of the Tatarstan region in central Russia.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said after the attack that the weaker Kyiv’s positions were “on the ground”, the more it resorted to “terrorist activities”, the Ria state news agency reported.
Though Ukraine continues to hold on to swaths of Russia’s Kursk region, Russia is pushing hard against overstretched Ukrainian forces on the Donbas frontline in eastern Ukraine, particularly in the direction of the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
Some have presented the Kursk invasion as an attempt by Kyiv to strengthen its position in any future negotiations with Moscow, particularly over the vast areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops and now claimed as constitutionally part of Russia by Moscow.
On Tuesday, former Russian defence minister and current secretary of the security council Sergei Shoigu said Russia would refuse to speak with Ukraine while its forces remained in Kursk.
“As long as we haven’t thrown them off of our territory, naturally we will hold no talks with them,” he said.
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