Russian officials said they had destroyed two attack drones targeting central Moscow on Monday morning. He said that no one was injured. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
At least two non-residential buildings were targeted at around 4 a.m. local time, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram account, adding that there was no “serious damage or casualties”. The Russian Defense Ministry previously said that electronic defense equipment was used to disable the drones.
Authorities blocked part of Komsomolsky Prospekt, which runs through one of the most expensive parts of central Moscow, after one of the drones was found there, state news media reported. One of the buildings is a block away from Russia’s National Defense Management Center, an imposing structure used to conduct “centralized combat management of the Russian Armed Forces,” according to the Defense Ministry’s website.
Videos reviewed by The New York Times show damage in at least two locations near the Moskva River in the southern part of the city.
Smoke rises from the top floors of a high-rise residential building of French home improvement chain Leroy Merlin. Other footage shows damage to several structures along Komsomolsky Prospekt – close to the Defense Ministry – including the Military University building and the Central Military Band, a performance group of the Russian armed forces. It was not possible to determine from the footage whether the drones caused the damage.
On Monday, Russian invasion officials in Crimea, a peninsula Russia illegally annexed in 2014, said 11 attack drones had been shot down or neutralized by air defenses. An ammunition depot in the Zhankoy district was hit, according to Sergei Aksyonov, a top Russian-based official in Crimea, although it was not immediately clear whether any damage was caused by a drone or an air defense missile.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov said officials are “all on alert” because of the strikes.
“In recent days, you can see that the intensity of attempts to attack our territories with drones has increased,” Mr. Peskov said. “So, measures are being taken, round-the-clock work is being carried out very intensively.”
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the fighting has focused on the front line in eastern Ukraine. Russia has fired missiles and drones daily at cities across Ukraine while Russian cities, including Moscow, have been spared the violence of the war.
But in May, Moscow’s relative safety was shattered when the first full-scale drone strikes were launched against the capital, some 800 kilometers, or about 500 miles, from the border with Ukraine.
In early May, two drone blasts took place over the Kremlin, injecting an aura of relative safety into the Russian capital. Later on May 31, Russia’s Defense Ministry said at least eight drones targeted the capital and the surrounding area. Russia claimed to have intercepted them all, but three residential buildings were damaged after the drones were stopped. This was the first damage to civilian areas in Moscow since the start of the war.
Ukraine maintains a policy of not responding to any attacks inside Russia that appear to be linked to its military or its supporters, arguing that silence allows it to maintain surprise and military advantage. But on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to retaliate against Russia after a week of deadly strikes on Odesa, which targeted civilians, infrastructure and port facilities critical to exporting grain.
Ukraine has begun to take public credit for the attacks in Crimea, which is far behind the front lines but is a key logistical hub for Russian forces, arguing that the attacks were inside Ukrainian territory.
Shawn Pike, Jin Yu Young And Ivan Nechepurenko Contribution report.
