Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones, which were shot down by air defences in what Russian officials said was one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers into Russia’s western Kursk region.
For months, Ukraine has also fought an increasingly damaging drone war against the refineries and airfields of the world’s second-largest oil exporter, though major drone attacks on the Moscow region — with a population of over 21 million — are more rare.
Russia’s defence ministry said it destroyed a total of 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region, 23 over the border region of Bryansk, six over the Belgorod region, three over the Kaluga region and two over the Kursk region.
Some of the drones were destroyed over the city of Podolsk, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. The city in the Moscow region is some 38 kilometres south of the Kremlin.
“This is one of the largest attempts to attack Moscow using drones ever,” Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app in the early hours of Wednesday.
“The layered defence of Moscow that was created made it possible to successfully repel all the attacks from the enemy UAVs.”
Drones in Moscow skies at dawn
The attack comes as Russia is advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it controls about 18 per cent of the territory, and battling to repel Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, the biggest foreign attack on Russian territory since the Second World War.
Russian media showed unverified footage of drones whirring over the dawn sky of the Moscow region and then being shot down in a ball of flame by air defences.
Moscow’s airports Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky limited flights for four hours but restarted normal operations early Wednesday morning, Russia’s aviation watchdog said.
Sobyanin said that according to preliminary information, there were no injuries or damage reported in the aftermath of the attacks.
There were also no casualties or damage reported in the aftermath of the attack on Bryansk in Russia’s southwest, the governor of the region, Alexander Bogomaz, wrote on Telegram.
In video from a Ukrainian prison holding Russian soldiers obtained by CBC News, some troops say they were conscripted and received little training before being overrun by Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s RIA state news agency reported that two drones were destroyed over the Tula region, which borders the Moscow region to its north. Vasily Golubev, governor of the Rostov region in Russia’s southwest, said air defence forces destroyed a Ukraine-launched missile over the region, with no injuries reported.
Ukraine’s military said on Wednesday it struck an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system based in Rostov.
Kyiv’s General Staff said the attack took place near the settlement of Novoshakhtinsk, and that S-300s had been used to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
The drone attack on Moscow on Wednesday is on a par with the May 2023 attack when at least eight drones were destroyed over the capital in an attack President Vladimir Putin said was Kyiv’s attempt to scare and provoke Russia.
In Kursk, Russian war bloggers said that intense battles were ongoing along the front in the region where Ukraine has carved out at least 450 square kilometres of Russian territory.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region means there will be no talks between Moscow and Kyiv until Ukraine is “completely and utterly destroyed” on the battlefield, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said on Wednesday.
In Ukraine, Kyiv’s military said it had destroyed 50 out of 69 attack drones launched by Russia during an overnight strike, Kyiv’s military said on Wednesday.
The air force said another 16 drones were likely downed by electronic warfare during the attack, which also included two ballistic and one cruise missiles. It said it shot down only the latter.
The military also said that one drone had entered Ukraine from Belarus.