Moscow airport shut after drone attacks damage office blocks; Kremlin says ‘Kyiv attempted terrorist attack’

Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport on Sunday was shut after two drones hit buildings in the Russian capital. The airport was shut after a night-time drone attack damaged two office blocks. The airport was “closed for departures and arrivals” and flights were redirected to other airports, news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.  

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two office blocks were damaged due to the drone attack allegedly by Ukraine. “A night-time Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow damaged two office blocks. The facades of two city office towers were slightly damaged. There are no victims or injured,” Sobyanin said in a Telegram post.  

Airport’s operations, however, appeared to return to normal within less than an hour. Meanwhile, Russia called the recent drone attack an attempted terrorist attack. Russia said one drone was shot down and two “suppressed by electronic warfare”, crashed into a building complex.  

“The Kyiv regime’s attempted terrorist attack with unmanned aerial vehicles on the objects in the city of Moscow was thwarted,” Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram. According to the Russian defence ministry, one Ukrainian UAV was destroyed in air over the territory of Odintsovo district of Moscow.  

Two other drones that were suppressed by electronic warfare and lost control crashed on the territory of Moscow-City’s non-residential building complex. Moscow-City is a commercial development to the city’s west.  

Earlier this month, a series of drone attacks disrupted air traffic at the same airport in Moscow. Russia said that it downed five Ukrainian drones that night. Russia’s foreign ministry claimed that attacks of this nature “would not be possible without the help provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and its NATO allies”.  

The development came a day after Russia said it had intercepted two missiles over its southern Rostov region bordering Ukraine. At least 16 people were wounded by debris falling on the city of Taganrog.  

Russia later said it had struck down an S-200 missile near the city of Azov as debris fell in an unpopulated area. A Russian strike killed two people in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine on Saturday.  

According to Ukrainian national police, at least one civilian was killed in a missile attack on the northeastern city of Sumi and five others were injured. On July 29, a missile hit an educational institution. In early July, a Russian drone hit an apartment building in the same city, killing three civilians and wounding 21 people.  

(With agency inputs) 

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