Moscow drone attack forces closure of city airport and hits heart of business district
Russia has accused Ukraine of another drone attack on its capital Moscow, damaging buildings in the business district and shutting down the one of the city’s airports.
The Russian Defence Ministry said it brought down three Ukrainian drones in the early hours of Sunday morning which had been trying to carry out what is said was a “terrorist attack” on the city.
It was the fourth attempt at a drone strike on the capital region this month and the third this week.
The air space over Moscow and surrounding region was temporarily closed to aircraft after the attack and no flights went into or out of the Vnukovo airport on the southern outskirts of the city for about an hour, according to news agency Tass.
Those restrictions have since been lifted.
Two drones crashed in the Moskva-Citi district after being brought down using radio-electronic equipment, the ministry said, and air defences shot down a third in the air over the Odintsovo area in the Moscow region.
“On the morning of 30 July, an attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime using unmanned aerial vehicles against targets in the city of Moscow was foiled,” the ministry said.
Russian state news agency Tass said that emergency officials had reported one security guard was injured.
But Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said nobody was hurt in the attack which “insignificantly damaged” the outsides of two buildings in the Moskva-Citi business district.
Photos from the site of the crash in the business district revealed the facade of a skyscraper damaged on one floor
Glass panels in one high-rise building appeared to be blown out and glass and debris littered part of the pavement below.
City authorities closed a street to traffic near the site of the crash.
A video posted on social media and apparently filmed by a passer-by showed flames shooting into the air near buildings after what sounded like an explosion and a young woman wailing.
“My friends and I rented an apartment to come here and unwind, and at some point, we heard an explosion and it was like a wave, everyone jumped,” one woman told Reuters.
“And then there was a lot of smoke and you couldn’t see anything. From above, you could see fire.”
This is the latest in a series of drone attacks on Moscow.
Russia’s Defence Ministry reported shooting down a Ukrainian drone outside Moscow on Friday.
And two drones struck Moscow on Monday, one of falling in the centre of the city near the Defence Ministry’s headquarters along the Moscow River about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Kremlin.
The other drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting several upper floors.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said after Monday’s attempted attack that there would be more drone strikes.
Earlier this month on 4 July, the Russian military said four drones were downed by air defences on the outskirts of Moscow and a fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down.
There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the latest incident.
