Mayor Says Russia's Air Defense Blocks Ukrainian Drone Attack On Moscow

Russian air defense system. (Wikimedia Commons/Mil,ru)

JAKARTA - Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Friday morning that air defense units managed to intercept Ukrainian drone attacks in four locations around the Russian capital.

In his upload on the Telegram Sobyanin application, he wrote, the air defense unit in the southeast of the capital, precisely in the Districts of Colombona and Ramenskoye, managed to fend off a group of "enemy" drones, without specifying how many were involved.

"At the crash site, there was no damage or casualties," Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram messaging app, without specifying how many unmanned aircraft were involved.

"Emergency specialists are on site," he continued.

Sobyanin said two drones heading to Moscow had been shot down by air defenses in the Podolsk district, south of the capital.

Next, he reported one drone crashed in Troitsky district, southwest of the capital and in Shchyolkovo, in the northeast.

Sobyanin said a specialist emergency crew had been sent to all such locations.

Meanwhile, the Russian news agency quoted Rosaviatsiya, a federal aviation agency, as saying two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, were handling flights after temporarily suspending operations. Six flights were diverted to another airport.

In the Ryazan area, southeast of Moscow, Regional Governor Pavel Markov said on Telegram emergency services were handling the impact of airstrikes.

Governor Markov said the emergency crew had extinguished the fire after pieces of the drone damaged a house. The air defense unit, he said, had destroyed a drone in the area.

The Telegram channel did not officially upload a video of what bloggers described as a major fire in the city and said oil storage depots and power plants had been affected.

Reuters could not independently confirm reports that debris falling from a drone had damaged a private home.

Meanwhile, the Governor of the Tula Region, also south of Moscow, said on Telegram that two drones had been "dinetrallated".

Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense said it had destroyed 49 Ukrainian drones for three hours on Thursday night. Most of them are in the Kursk area near the Ukrainian border.

The ministry, in a report on Telegram, said 37 unmanned aircraft had been destroyed only in the Kursk area, where Ukrainian troops took control of parts of the territory following last August's mass attack.

The unofficial Russian Telegram channel has reported "a large number" of unmanned aircraft in the Kursk area and uploaded a video of the explosion.

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

The ministry's statement also said the drone had also been destroyed in the border areas of Bryansk and Belgorod as well as the Russian annexed Crimean Peninsula.