MOSCOW: Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow in years on Thursday, sparking fires in and around the capital and forcing evacuations at the country’s busiest airport, officials said.
Russian air defences shot down 180 drones on approach to Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, while the defence ministry reported intercepting more than 500 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Unverified videos on social media showed large columns of black smoke over the city’s skyline, while others showed drones buzzing overhead.
“Air defence forces are continuing to repel a large-scale attack. Several drones managed to reach the MNPZ (Moscow Oil Refinery),” Sobyanin wrote on Telegram, with authorities closing traffic on streets near the refinery.
Russia’s busiest airport, Sheremetyevo, announced it had evacuated passengers to “safe locations” and was restricting flights.
Another drone crashed into an apartment building in the Zhukovsky district, while debris sparked a fire at a shopping centre near the capital’s suburbs, regional governor Andrey Vorobyov said.
The attack was the largest on Moscow in at least two years, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported.
It came hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to host Southeast Asian leaders at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Kazan, about 700 kilometres east of the capital.
Kyiv has stepped up drone strikes on Russia in recent months, hitting oil refineries that fund Moscow’s war chest, as diplomatic talks on ending the more than four-year conflict remain stalled.
Since the war began in 2022, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with near-daily aerial barrages of drones and missiles.
