Ukraine has carried out one its biggest drone attacks on Russia since the beginning of the war, killing a woman in the Moscow region and forcing the closure of airports around the capital.
Russia’s defence ministry said overnight it had shot down 144 unmanned aerial vehicles, including 20 over Moscow. Others were intercepted in multiple other regions, it said.
Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, confirmed that a blaze had broken out on the runway at Zhukovsky airfield caused by falling debris from a drone. Videos circulating online showed a fire burning next to a plane and a passenger bus.
Three out of four Moscow airports were shut, including Domodedovo international airport, which was reportedly targeted for the first time. More than 30 domestic and international flights were suspended, Russian agencies reported.
A main road into Moscow, the Kashirskoye highway, was blocked because of falling drone wreckage.
On Monday night a drone struck a residential building in Moscow’s Ramenskoye district, about 30 miles south-east of the Kremlin. Moscow’s governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said a 46-year-old woman died and three people were injured as fire engulfed flats, and 43 people were evacuated to temporary accommodation centres.
Video filmed from nearby apartments showed an explosion on the 11th and 12th floors. “I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters. “The window got blown out by the shock wave.”
Other explosions were heard over Bryansk oblast at about 12.30am local time. Authorities in the Tula region said they had destroyed two drones and that the debris landed on an energy facility. Other UAVs were spotted in the Smolensk, Belgorod, Kursk and Oryol regions.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv. In recent weeks Ukraine has stepped up its campaign of long-range attacks against military targets and power stations deep inside Russia. Several drones dispatched on Monday night flew more than 500 miles (800km).
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the attacks are an answer to the Kremlin’s repeated strikes on Ukrainian civilians and its own energy infrastructure. Ten days ago drones hit an oil refinery in south-east Moscow.
Since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, many Russians have considered the war as something far away that does not concern them. As Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s strategy is to take the fight to Russia’s territory so that its citizens can no longer ignore it.
Just over a month ago Ukraine’s armed forces launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, seizing about 100 settlements and the border town of Sudzha. Tens of thousands of local residents have fled and the area has been the scene of intense clashes.