At least four Ukrainian drones were downed while heading to Moscow in the early hours of Sunday, according to Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
The Defense Ministry said some 35 UAVs were intercepted overnight, as Kiev’s forces continue to target Russian infrastructure and border towns.
“The Russian Defense Ministry’s air defenses in the Domodedovo district have repelled a drone attack on Moscow,” Mayor Sergey Sobyanin confirmed on Telegram around 4:40am Sunday morning, noting that two hostile targets were downed in the area. Two more UAVs weve intercepted in the Ramensky and Stupino districts, Sobyanin added an hour later.
No damage was inflicted and no one was hurt in the areas where the debris fell, the official said, adding that the emergency services were responding to the incidents. Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, located to the south of the capital, also reported no irregularities in its operations.
Around the same time, several Ukrainian drones attempted to strike an oil refinery in the town of Slavyansk in Russia’s Krasnodar Region, causing a fire that was quickly contained, according to local authorities. While there were no direct casualties in the strike, one person died in a suspected heart attack during the incident, emergency services said.
Authorities in the Kaluga, Oryol, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Kursk and Belgorod regions also reported drone downings overnight, with no casualties or major damage on the ground. In total, Russian air defenses had intercepted some 35 drones by 7am, according to the Defense Ministry.
The past week in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been marked by a major escalation on the border areas between the two countries, as Kiev’s forces staged multiple attempts to breach the Kursk and Belgorod regions. The attacks came ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential election, which began on Friday.
Starting from Tuesday, Ukrainian forces staged attempts to breach the Russian border, attacking multiple locations along its frontier with Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, coupled with a sharp uptick in suicide-drone attacks and waves of UAVs apparently targeting oil refineries and fuel depots.