A view of the damaged building is shown after a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia. Photo / AP
A view of the damaged building is shown after a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia. Photo / AP
Russian authorities accused Ukraine of launching a drone attack on Moscow early today that saw one of the aircraft fall near the Defence Ministry’s main headquarters, while the Russian military launched new strikes on port infrastructure in southern Ukraine.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties when the drones struck two non-residential buildings. The Defence Ministry claimed the military jammed both attacking drones, forcing them to crash.
Russian media reported that one of the drones fell on the Komsomolsky highway near Moscow’s centre, close to the main Defence Ministry building. Another drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting its upper floors.
Emergency workers were inspecting the damage and traffic was halted on sections of highways where the drones fell.
Ukrainian authorities didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the strike, which was the second drone attack on the Russian capital this month.
In the previous attack, on July 4, the Russian military said four of five drones were downed by air defences on the outskirts of Moscow and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down. The raid prompted authorities to temporarily restrict flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and divert flights to two other Moscow airports.
Russian authorities said another Ukrainian drone attack early on Monday struck an ammunition depot in northern Crimea and forced a halt in traffic on a major highway and a railway crossing the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. Railway traffic was restored several hours later.
The Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that authorities also ordered the evacuation of several villages within a 5-kilometre radius of the depot that was hit.
Aksyonov said the military shot down or jammed 11 attacking drones, while the Defence Ministry claimed later that 11 of the 17 attacking drones were jammed and crashed into the Black Sea and a further three were shot down.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, noted on his messaging app channel that Monday’s drone attacks on Moscow and Crimea signalled that Russia’s electronic warfare means and air defences are “less and less able to protect the skies of the invaders,” adding that “there will be more of it”.
A building is seen heavily damaged following Russian missile attacks in Odesa, Ukraine. Photo / AP
Ukrainska Pravda reported that the drone attack on Moscow was a special operation by Ukrainian military intelligence.
On Saturday, a previous drone attack on Crimea hit another ammunition depot, sending huge plumes of black smoke skyward and also forcing the evacuation of residents,
Russian forces, meanwhile, struck port infrastructure on the Danube River in southern Ukraine with exploding drones early on Monday, wounding four workers and destroying a grain hangar and storage for other cargo, the Ukrainian military said. It said Ukrainian forces downed three of the attacking drones.
The strike was the latest in a barrage of attacks that has damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week. The Kremlin has described the strikes as retribution for last week’s Ukrainian strike on the crucial Kerch Bridge linking Russia with Crimea.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum via video link over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the bridge a legitimate target for Ukraine, noting that Russia has used it to ferry military supplies and it must be “neutralised”.
Since Moscow cancelled a landmark grain deal a week ago amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories, Russia has launched repeated attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain.
On Sunday, at least one person was killed and 22 others wounded in an attack on Odesa that severely damaged 25 landmarks across the city, including the Transfiguration Cathedral.
United Nations agency Unesco strongly condemned the attack on the cathedral and other heritage sites and said it will send a mission in coming days to assess damage. Odesa’s historic centre was declared a Unesco World Heritage site this year and Unesco said the Russian attacks contradict Moscow’s pledge to take precautions to spare World Heritage sites in Ukraine.
The Russian military denied it had targeted the Transfiguration Cathedral, claiming without offering evidence that it was likely struck by a Ukrainian air defence missile.
