A drone hit a building under construction in Moscow’s financial district early on Wednesday in the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on Russia’s capital region.
A loud explosion was heard in Moscow’s business district on Wednesday morning, a short time after flights were suspended at the city’s airports, Russia’s RIA news agency reported. Russian media published videos showing the moment of the explosion that left charred holes in the side of the buildings.
The central district is less than three miles from the Kremlin.
The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, said the Russian military downed two more drones over the western part of the Moscow region.
Ukraine has launched a campaign of drone strikes targeting the Russian capital in recent days as Kyiv seeks to demonstrate its ability to hit Moscow and to keep the Kremlin’s war in the hearts and minds of the Russian elites and others seeking to ignore the invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier waves of drone strikes have hit the Moscow city financial centre, other residential buildings, or targeted areas in the wealthy western suburbs of the Rublyovka district, a few miles from Vladimir Putin’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence. Though the drone attacks on Moscow have occurred almost daily in recent weeks, they have caused little damage and no casualties.
They have, however, triggered travel chaos, with big airports around the Russian capital forced to repeatedly close for departing and arriving flights.
Also on Wednesday, the governor of the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said a Ukrainian drone had hit a sanatorium in a village. He said two people had died on the spot and doctors had been unable to save a third. If confirmed, the drone attack would mark the first known incident involving civilian deaths on Russian territory.
Ukraine typically declines to claim responsibility for attacks on Russian territory, although Kyiv officials have frequently celebrated such attacks with cryptic or mocking remarks. Last month, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that attacks on Russian territory were an “inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process” of the war between the two countries.
In response to reports of recent drone attacks, the US state department said Washington did not encourage or enable the strikes on Russian territory. “It is up to Ukraine to decide how it chooses to defend itself from the Russian invasion,” the US spokesperson said.
On Tuesday, British military intelligence said a Ukrainian drone attack appeared to have destroyed a supersonic Russian bomber on the Soltsy-2 airbase, 400 miles (650km) from the border with Ukraine.
Social media images showed an aircraft that resembled the Tu-22M3 in flames on a runway. The planes have been used regularly in campaigns that killed civilians in Ukraine.
Ukraine on Wednesday also said it had destroyed a Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.
“At about 10am (0700 GMT) an explosion occurred … destroying a Russian long- and medium-range S-400 Triumph air defence system,” the Ukrainian defence ministry said on social media.
The ministry published a video of a large explosion with a huge column of smoke billowing into the sky. “This is a painful blow to the occupiers’ air defence system,” the ministry said.
Russia’s defence ministry did not comment but several pro-Moscow bloggers said the destruction of the anti-aircraft system exposed vulnerabilities in Russian defences.
