Drones damage Moscow buildings, Kyiv bombarded

Associated Press

Kyiv, Ukraine: A rare drone attack jolted Moscow early Tuesday, causing only light damage but forcing evacuations as residential buildings were struck in the Russian capital for the first time in the war against Ukraine.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, pursued its relentless bombardment of Kyiv with a third assault on the city in 24 hours. The Russian Defense Ministry said five drones were shot down in Moscow and the systems of three others were jammed, causing them to veer off course. It called the incident a “terrorist attack” by the “Kyiv regime.”

The attack, causing only what Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called “insignificant damage” to several buildings, brought the war home to civilians in Russia’s capital. Two people received treatment for unspecified injuries but did not need hospitalization, he said in a Telegram post, adding that residents of two highrise buildings damaged in the attack were evacuated. Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the wider Moscow region, said some of the drones were “shot down on the approach to Moscow.”

Ukraine made no direct comment on the attack, which would be one of its deepest and most daring strikes into Russia since the Kremlin launched its fullscale invasion of Ukraine more than 15 months ago. Russian President Vladimir Putin started work early on Tuesday to receive information about the drone attack from various government agencies, but did not plan to address the nation in the wake of the assault, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Asked by The Associated Press whether there is concern in the Kremlin that the invasion of Ukraine is endangering Russian civilians, Peskov said only that attacks on Russia reinforce the need to prosecute the war. Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the Kremlin’s policy is to play down the attacks.

“You ask, why is Putin behaving like this, does he really not understand and fear the consequences?” she wrote in a Telegram post. “Apparently he isn’t afraid, and everything is built on the idea that has been voiced more than once about a patient people who will understand everything and endure everything.”

Still, the attacks raised questions about the effectiveness of Russia’s air defense systems. A senior Russian lawmaker, Andrei Kartapolov, told Russian business news site RBC that “we have a very big country and there will always be a loophole where the drone can fly around the areas where air defense systems are located.”