Over 140 Ukrainian drones targeted multiple Russian regions overnight, including Moscow and surrounding areas, killing at least one person and injuring eight, officials said Tuesday, in one of the biggest drone attacks on Russian soil in the 2 1/2-year war.
A woman died in the town of Ramenskoye, just outside Moscow, where drones hit two multistory residential buildings and started fires, Moscow region Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said. Five residential buildings were evacuated due to falling drone debris, Vorobyov said.
The attack also prompted the authorities to shut three airports just outside Moscow — Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky — forcing 48 flights to be diverted to other airports, according to Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia.
The first two airports, which are Russia’s second- and third-busiest, reopened in the morning but Zhukovsky was still closed in the afternoon because law enforcement officers were dealing with drone debris there, an airport spokesperson told the Interfax news agency.
It was the second massive Ukrainian drone attack on Russia this month. On Sept. 1, the Russian military said it intercepted 158 Ukrainian drones over more than a dozen Russian regions in what Russian media described as the biggest Ukrainian drone barrage since the start of the war. Russia’s Investigative Committee announced a criminal investigation into what it described as a terror attack.
Russia has pummeled Ukraine with missiles, glide bombs and its own drones, killing over 10,000 civilians since the war began in 2022, according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 46 Shahed drones and two missiles at Ukraine overnight. The air force said it downed 36 of the drones.
Ukraine has invested a lot of effort in developing domestic drone production, extending drones’ range, payload and uses. It has increasingly utilized drone blitzes to slow Russia’s war machine, disrupt Russian society and provoke the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials have complained that weapons pledged by the country’s Western partners fall short of what their military needs and commonly arrive long after promised. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged defense companies to increase their output.
On the battlefield’s 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, Ukrainian troops are up against Russia’s larger and better-equipped army. The two sides are especially contesting parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, fighting over towns and villages that are bombed-out wrecks, while Ukraine last month launched a bold incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region.
In Moscow on Monday night, drone debris fell on a private house on the outskirts of the city, but no one was hurt, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. He counted over a dozen drones heading toward Moscow that were shot down by air defenses as they were approaching the city.
Overall, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it “intercepted and destroyed” 144 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions, including those on the border with Ukraine and those deeper inside Russia.
Ukrainian officials declined to comment on the attack.
As the war drags on, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been expanding his alliances:
The Russian military on Tuesday began massive naval and air drills, involving over 90,000 troops and over 400 warships, that China will also take part in, the Defense Ministry said.
Putin is also beefing up his military arsenal with Iranian ballistic missiles, the United States and Britain said Tuesday.
Moscow and the surrounding region have often come under attack throughout the war.
In May 2023, Russian officials said Ukraine tried to attack the Kremlin with drones which lightly damaged the roof of the palace that includes one of Putin’s official residences.
In August 2023, a drone attack on Moscow’s prestigious business district blew out part of a section of windows on a high-rise building and sent glass cascading to the streets, unsettling Muscovites. The attacks exposed gaps in the city and region’s air defenses.