Russia said it shot down three Ukrainian drones flying toward Moscow and its surrounding regions on Wednesday, in the sixth consecutive day of attacks on the capital region.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russian air defense systems shot down two drones over the Mozhaisk and Khimki districts, the country’s defense ministry said on Telegram. A third drone was jammed with electronic warfare and lost control, hitting a building under construction in the Moscow City district. According to the ministry, there were no casualties.
“City emergency services are inspecting the area in the perimeter of the City for the consequences of the strike,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel. “Several windows in two neighboring five-story buildings were blown out.”
Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti reported that the third drone damaged the glazing of a Moscow tower and windows on two floors of a residential building. Wreckage of the drone that fell over the Khimki region also caused minor damage to a private house and a non-residential building.
Russia accused Kyiv of attempting to carry out a “terrorist attack,” but Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attacks or claim responsibility.
RIA also reported that air traffic at Moscow’s Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports was disrupted, with several delays and cancelations. Air traffic later returned to normal, according to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.
A separate drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border killed three people on Wednesday, the governor of the region said.
These are the latest in a series of drone attacks that have increasingly targeted Russian territory, including its capital in recent weeks. Wednesday’s strike was the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on the Moscow region, according to AFP.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department said the United States does not encourage attacks inside Russian territory, but that it is Ukraine’s choice how it defends itself from Russia.
Several drones attacked the center of Moscow in the early hours of Sunday morning, in the latest assault on Russian territory that the city’s mayor blamed on Kyiv.
The drones hit two high-rise buildings in an area called Moscow City, a posh business district in the center of the Russian capital, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a Telegram statement on Sunday.
“Ukrainian drones attacked tonight. The facades of two city office towers were slightly damaged. There are no victims or injured,” Sobyanin said.
Russian media reported that a 50-story building in Moscow City was evacuated. And Russian social media users posted videos of blasts.
Russian media channel Astra reported that one of the drones damaged the 10th floor of an office building in Moscow City, where at least three Russian ministries have their offices — the Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Trade and Ministry of Digital Development.
Ukraine did not officially take responsibility for the attack. “We can neither confirm nor deny,” Andriy Yusov, representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, told POLITICO. Ukrainian officials almost never admit responsibility for military operations in Russian territory.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a third drone was shot down in the Moscow region.
The attack on Moscow happened the night after Ukrainian Armed Forces hit a key bridge in Chonhar. The Friday night bombing severely damaged one of the strategic supply routes for the Russian army occupying the south of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Strategic Communications Center said in a statement on Saturday.
Vladimir Saldo, a Russian-installed official in the occupied part of the Kherson region, had said earlier Saturday that Ukrainian forces launched 12 Storm Shadow missiles at the bridge in Chonhar. He said that all missiles were shot down by Russian air defense, providing no evidence for his claim.
This is not the first attack on the Chonhar bridge. On June 22, Ukrainians attacked the bridge with a Storm Shadow missile, Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov, chief of the Main Operational Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a July 5 interview with the Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform.
The attack on the Chonhar bridge came the day after a missile damaged the city center of Taganrog in the Rostov region of Russia. Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said a missile fell near Chekhov Sad cafe in the city center. Sixteen people were wounded, but no one died, he said in a statement.
Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the Taganrog attack. The Russian Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of using a Soviet-made S200 missile to attack Taganrog. It said air defense shot down the weapon but falling debris caused damage and injuries.
Russian independent media Istories reported that a missile hit 10 kilometers away from Russian strategic bombers at an airfield used to bomb Ukraine.
Moscow took 12 hours to respond after an explosion lit up the dome of the Kremlin complex last Wednesday.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the security services needed time to investigate the incident.
But the Kremlin’s spin doctors worked extra hours too, no doubt.
On the eve of Victory Day — which traditionally celebrates the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany, but which has become emblematic of Russia’s current war against Ukraine — the Kremlin’s line at home is that the country is battling an enemy as powerful as it is evil.
That narrative is meant to account for the absence of success on the battlefront after 14 months of fighting, while offering Russians a sense of security that for them life will continue as usual.
But a series of mysterious incidents — including Wednesday’s early-morning blast — is revealing cracks in Russia’s facade of strength. The cancellation of some of the Victory Day festivities is another sign that appearances are beginning to slip.
The Kremlin eventually described the 2 a.m. incursion of two drones onto the heavily protected Moscow compound as an assassination attempt on President Putin by the “Kyiv regime.” That was in a statement Wednesday afternoon, which also claimed the right to respond “where and when it sees fit.” Putin wasn’t in the complex at the time. A day later, Moscow added the U.S. to its accusation of blame for the blast.
“We know very well that decisions about such actions, such terrorist attacks, are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington,” Peskov said on Thursday.
Both Kyiv and Washington vehemently deny any involvement.
Playing it down
Wednesday’s drone attack was the latest in a number of unexplained incidents on Russian soil in recent months, including a car bomb attack on an ultranationalist writer on Saturday — the third targeting of pro-war figures since the start of the invasion, resulting in two deaths. There also have been a number of crashed drones, the derailing of freight trains, and at least two fires at fuel depots in Crimea.
In allthose cases, the Kremlin downplayed the news or kept its distance.
The Kremlin is one of the best-protected sites in Russia, and it has been widely assumed that piercing its air defenses was next to impossible | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
So the fact that this time, it chose to publish an official statement and pointed the finger at the U.S., its main enemy, suggests the Kremlin wants people to take note. But to what effect?
Predictably, the Kremlin’s main mouthpieces have clamored for revenge. Former Russian president and current head of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has called for the “physical elimination” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Maybe now things will start for real?” wrote Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT.
But other than the usual jingoistic saber-rattling, Russia’s main evening news programs did not air the scenes of the drone explosion.
And still, more questions than answers remain.
The Kremlin is one of the best-protected sites in Russia, and it has been widely assumed that piercing its air defenses was next to impossible. Moreover, it is well-known that Putin spends most of his time at other locations.
That has fed speculation that the drone attack was in fact a false-flag operation staged by one of Russia’s own security services.
Possible motives could be an internal power struggle — as much as the security services are seen as a monolith, they are in fact infamously divided — or an attempt to dissuade the West from further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, since the arms would supposedly be used in strikes on Russian territory.
Symbolic space
But an attack on the heart of power carries a large symbolic, if not physical, price. It was in the domed Kremlin Senate that Putin staged the historic meeting with his security advisers that preceded the February 2022 launch of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its symbolism is undeniable.
Regardless of who is behind the incursion, it is less likely to produce a rally-around-the flag effect than raise eyebrows over the Kremlin’s own defense system.
As yet, the most important military parade, in Moscow — broadcast live on Russian state television — is still on | Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
Comparisons are being made to when the 19-year-old German Mathias Rust landed a Cessna plane near the Kremlin during the Cold War. The fact that he managed to fly across the border unchallenged was a stark humiliation for Mikhail Gorbachev. Heads rolled among his defense staff as a result.
The timing of last week’s incident does not help either, coming right before the country puts on its usual display of military prowess for Victory Day on May 9.
Even before Wednesday’s strike, the situation was tense. Avoiding the use of the word “war,” which has been banned, dozens of Russian cities have canceled their military parades in order to not “provoke the adversary.” The Immortal Regiment, a hugely popular procession of people carrying photos of their relatives who fought in World War II, has been called off. Some places have even nixed their fireworks shows.
On the one hand, such changes to an important national holiday could drive home the message that Russians are at war with, as the Kremlin puts it, “terrorists.” But the knife cuts both directions.
“In the current context, the cancellation of the parades will be taken as yet another sign that things are going very badly,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned analyst, told the Echo Moskvy outlet.
While avoiding mass gatherings in cities close to Russia’s border with Ukraine might seem like a logical precaution, that is less obvious for those thousands of kilometers away in Siberia.
Red Square speech
Some wonder aloud whether certain cities might simply lack the military equipment for a parade. Or whether they might wish to stop people taking to the streets holding photos of their relatives who have died in Ukraine, thereby providing a visual of Russia’s wartime death toll.
As yet, the most important military parade, in Moscow — broadcast live on Russian state television — is still on. But the tension in the capital is palpable.
Red Square has been shut to the public for two weeks and streets have been barricaded.
Following Wednesday’s incident, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin immediately banned the use of drones, and dozens of other regions have since followed suit. Days in advance, Muscovites were already experiencing problems with their GPS signals.
Much will hinge on Putin. His yearly Victory Day speech on Red Square is one of the few moments when his whereabouts are known in advance.
After Wednesday’s security breach, some question whether he might reconsider.
But the optics of his absence would not be good, and chances are slim that the Kremlin would risk the psychological fallout.
And yet, the question of whether it is safe enough for the president to come out in public in central Moscow speaks louder than the sound of 10,000 men marching on Red Square.
