Armed drones attack Moscow for third time in a week; one injured

Moscow came under fire from armed drones Sunday for the third time in a week, with the latest attack injuring at least one Russian citizen and temporarily shutting down an airport near the Russian capital.

Ukraine did not officially claim responsibility for the drone attack, but officials in Kyiv said the incident proves there will be no “peace or calm” inside Russia as long as it wages war in Ukraine. Those comments seem to suggest that Ukraine is responsible for Sunday’s assault.

Russian officials said one of the armed drones was shot down outside the city. The other two were jammed and crashed in Moscow’s business district, officials said. Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported that two office buildings were damaged when the jammed drones crashed into them.

A security guard in one of the buildings was injured, TASS reported.

Airspace in Moscow was temporarily restricted and flights were halted at the city’s Vnukovo airport, according to media reports.

Sunday’s attack was the third such attempted drone strike on the Russian capital over the past week and the fourth this month. It came amid Ukraine’s major counteroffensive operation in the disputed Donbas region of Ukraine.

While Kyiv has not officially taken responsibility for the drone attacks, it seems likely that Ukraine is behind the operations in an effort to bring the war to the Russian homeland.

“All of the people who think the war doesn’t concern them, it’s already touching them,” Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, said Sunday.

“There’s already a certain mood in Russia: that something is flying in, and loudly,” he said. “There’s no discussion of peace or calm in the Russian interior any more. They got what they wanted.”

Indeed, the fight increasingly has come to Russian soil. Last Monday, Moscow used electronic warfare systems to jam two drones attempting to hit targets in Moscow, one of which appears to have been Russia’s Ministry of Defense headquarters in the heart of the city.

Russian state-controlled media reported that one of the drones fell on the Komsomolsky highway just over 200 yards from the Defense Ministry building. A strike on that facility would have represented a major symbolic blow to the Russian military and might have killed or injured top military officials.

Repeated efforts to strike the Russian capital have sparked anger among Russian officials and fueled fears that the Russian side may launch new strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in a social media post last week that his country should increase its attacks on “non-standard targets” in Ukraine.