Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had downed five Ukrainian drones near Moscow, calling it a “terrorist act” that disrupted flights at one of the capital’s main airports.
Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport.Valery Sharifulin / TASS
Four unmanned aircraft were downed by air defense systems near Moscow, with the fifth “suppressed by electronic warfare” in the Moscow region, the Russian military said.
According to state news agencies, the intercepted attacks were reported across a wide area. These locations include the Kaluga region, situated 200 kilometers southwest of Moscow, the town of Kubinka, which hosts an air base, and the village of Valuevo, some 30 kilometers west of Moscow.
Kubinka and Valuevo are located nearby the Vnukovo International Airport, where flights were briefly disrupted by the attacks Tuesday morning.No casualties or damage were reported.
“An attempt by the Kyiv regime to attack a zone where civil infrastructure is located, including an airport that receives international flights, is a new terrorist act,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Telegram messaging app.“Considering that [Ukraine’s President Volodymyr] Zelensky is committing these terrorist attacks with weapons supplied by the West or purchased with Western funds, this is international terrorism,” she added.
Drone attacks have been reported across Russia’s regions since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but in recent months they have intensified.
Russian authorities have become increasingly preoccupied with drones following the May 3 attack on the Kremlin, which they call an attempted assassination by Kyiv on President Vladimir Putin.
A drone attack targeting Moscow on May 30 was by far the largest wave launched against Russia since it invaded Ukraine last year.On June 21, the Moscow region’s governor said a group of drones was downed on approach to a military warehouse outside Moscow. The village where the drones crashed is the base of Russia’s 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division.
