Ukraine has launched a devastating attack on Russia involving 144 drones as Moscow came under sustained attack this morning.
One person, a 46-year-old has died in the onslaught. The governor of Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, confirmed the woman’s death from a strike on two high-rise apartment buildings in Ramenskoye, around 29 miles from the Russian capital.
He added that three people were injured in the attack on the Moscow suburb, while 43 people were evacuated to temporary accommodation centres. Emergency crews were dispatched to deal with the fire ripping through the 11th and 12th floor of the building.
Footage on Telegram channels showed flames bursting out from a multi-story residential building. Witnesses said that five flats were destroyed.
Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters: “I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire. The window got blown out by the shockwave.”
Another terrified resident told Shot media: “I saw a fireball [and] managed to cover my wife.
“It was just a second, a bang and the window was blown out. We were all scared and ran in panic.”
As a result, three major airports in and around Moscow were forced to cancel or delay flights after the brutal assault. More than 30 domestic and international flights that were set to fly out of Moscow were suspended.
At the Zhukovsky airport, a fire broke out on the runway, according to Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin, who blamed it on falling debris from a downed drone
The Moscow mayor said that emergency services had been scrambled to deal with the attack, with crews being rushed to several sites across the capital as well as the airports.
Russia‘s defence ministry half of the 144 drones were downed, with a majority of the attacks hitting the western border region of Bryansk. The governor of the border state Aleksander Bogomaz described the attack as “massive”.
The defence ministry said around 20 drones attacked Moscow and 14 were over the Kursk region. Around 13 drones attacked the Tula region, with Russian authorities claiming that debris from a downed drone fell on a fuel and energy facility.
Ukraine has so far not commented on the attacks.
Russia‘s aviation authority confirmed that the three major airports – Domodedovo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo – shut down during the surprise attack had now resumed operations.
The attack marks one of the largest drone assaults against Russia since the start of the war.
The attack on Moscow, nearly 500 miles from Ukraine‘s border, brings the war home to many ordinary Russians and piles pressure on Vladimir Putin.
In recent months, Ukraine has stepped up precision drone attacks on Russian energy, military and transport infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Russia launched its own barrage of drone strikes overnight against Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Air Force confirmed that its air defences downed 38 out of 46 Iranian-made Shahed-type attack drones launched by Russia They were shot down over Kyiv, Odesa, Kherson, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltova.