By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had brought down three Ukrainian drones in the early hours of Sunday morning that had been trying to carry out what it called “a terrorist attack” on Moscow.
Nobody was hurt and there was only minor damage to the facade of two office buildings in the Moskva-Citi business district, Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said.
The area, several miles from the Kremlin, is known for its modern high-rise towers.
The fact that hostile drones have in recent months begun reaching the heart of the Russian capital, even if they do not inflict serious damage, is uncomfortable for the authorities who have told the public that Russia is in full control of what they call its “special military operation” against Ukraine.
“There were no casualties or injuries,” Sobyanin said in a short statement on the incident.
The Defence Ministry said two drones had crashed in the Moskva-Citi district after being brought down using radio-electronic equipment. Air defences had shot down one more in the air over the Odintsovo area in the Moscow region, it said.
“On the morning of 30th 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 in its statement.
An unverified video apparently filmed by a passer-by which surfaced on social media 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,” a young woman, who only gave her name as Liya, told Reuters.
“And then there was a lot of smoke and you couldn’t see anything. From above, you could see fire.”
Some glass panels in one high-rise building were blown out and glass and debris littered part of the pavement below, according to a Reuters reporter on the scene, which had been cordoned off by police and emergency services.
The incident followed what Russia said was a similar Ukrainian attempt to attack Moscow with two drones in the early hours of Monday. It spoke at the time of taking harsh retaliatory measures against Ukraine.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said after Monday’s attempted attack that there would be more drone strikes. There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the latest incident.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow and by; Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard and Lincoln Feast)
