Russia says it repelled massive Ukrainian drone attack on 13 regions including Moscow

By Andrew Osborn and Ronald Popeski

(Reuters) -Russian air defences repelled a massive Ukrainian drone attack overnight, intercepting and destroying 121 drones targeting 13 regions, including Moscow, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday, making no mention of casualties or damage.

The ministry said six drones had been destroyed over the Moscow region and one over the capital itself, while other drones had targeted other regions, including those that border Ukraine and Kursk, where Ukrainian troops hold a chunk of land despite Russian efforts to eject them.

Twenty drones had also targeted the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, the ministry said, and channels on the Telegram messaging app posted unverified videos of what bloggers there described as large blazes in the city. They said an oil storage depot and a power station had been hit.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said on Friday it had also fought off a Russian drone attack had and shot down 25 of 58 drones launched by Russia in an overnight assault.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said drone debris had killed two men and a woman in the central Kyiv region, and that another person had been injured.

Commenting on the damage caused by Ukraine’s drone attacks, Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation, said on Telegram that an oil refinery in Ryazan had been hit as well as the Kremniy plant in Bryansk, which Kyiv says produces microelectronics for Russian weapons systems.

Reuters could not confirm those reports but Russia’s state RIA news agency cited a statement from the Kremniy plant as saying that work at the factory had been suspended after an attack by six drones which did not hurt anyone. Interfax news agency cited local officials as saying a clear-up was underway after drone fragments struck a factory.

Pavel Malkov, the Ryazan regional governor, said on Telegram that emergency services were tackling the aftermath.

MOSCOW TARGETED

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said early on Friday that air defences had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations around the Russian capital.

Sobyanin, writing on Telegram, said air defences southeast of the capital in Kolomna and Ramenskoye had repelled “enemy” drones, without specifying how many.

“At the site where fragments fell, no damage or casualties occurred,” Sobyanin wrote. “Specialist emergency crews are at the site.”

Sobyanin said two drones also headed for Moscow had been downed by air defences in Podolsk, south of the capital, and he reported a single drone downed in Troitsky, southwest of the capital and in Shchyolkovo, to the northeast.

Russian news agencies quoted Rosaviatsiya, the federal aviation agency, as saying two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, were handling flights after suspending operations for a time. Six flights were redirected to other airports.

In the city of Kursk, Mayor Igor Kutsak said the overnight attack had damaged power lines and cut off electricity to one city district.

The Defence Ministry statement said drones had also been destroyed over the border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. The Saratov, Rostov, Voronezh, Tula, Oryol and Lipetsk regions were also targeted.

(Reporting by Reuters Moscow Buro;Additional reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv Writing by Andrew Osborn and Ronald PoleskiEditing by Jamie Freed, Diane Craft, Gerry Doyle and Gareth Jones)