(Moscow) Russia said on Monday it neutralized two Ukrainian drones in Moscow overnight, one of which crashed near the Defense Ministry, while new strikes hit Crimea and the Odessa region in southern Ukraine.
The Moscow region had not been the target of drones for almost three weeks. The attack comes after Kyiv vowed retaliation for Russian strikes on Odessa over the weekend that left two dead and ripped through a cathedral.
“Two Ukrainian drones were neutralized and crashed. There are no casualties,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, accusing Kyiv of carrying out a “terrorist act.”
One of the drones fell on a major axis of the Russian capital, Komsomolsky Prospekt, near the Russian Ministry of Defense.
AFP journalists present at the scene saw a building with a damaged roof, several law enforcement vehicles and fire trucks, as well as an ambulance. The police cordoned off the area.
“I wasn’t asleep. It was 3:39 in the morning. The house really shook,” Vladimir, a 70-year-old resident, told AFP. “It’s outrageous that a Ukrainian drone can almost fly to the Ministry of Defense”, he gets carried away.
Anton Kashirin, 32, a waiter in a nearby café, calmly considers this attack “probably a little dangerous”: “I’m calm, it happened and that’s it. This is nothing new and not the first time this has happened. »
Another drone hit the business center on Likhatcheva Street, where an AFP photographer could see broken windows on top of a tall building, near a store of the French group Leroy Merlin.
Ammunition depot in Crimea
Moscow and its region, located more than 500 km from the Ukrainian border, have already been targeted by drone attacks, including one that hit the Kremlin in May.
On July 4, five drones were shot down over the Moscow region, according to Moscow, an attack that disrupted the operation of Vnukovo, one of the capital’s three major international airports.
This new attack on Moscow echoes those that have affected annexed Crimea and southern Ukraine for the past week, where tensions have further increased after Moscow’s abandonment last Monday of a key agreement for the export of Ukrainian cereals via the Black Sea.
In Crimea, an ammunition depot was hit in a new Ukrainian drone strike in the Djankoï district, in the north of the annexed peninsula, Russian governor Sergei Asksionov reported on Monday.
The population is temporarily evacuated within a radius of 5 kilometers around the depot, he said. Rail traffic in this district was suspended for a few hours and then restored.
According to the Russian army, 14 Ukrainian drones launched on Crimea were neutralized with jamming systems and three others shot down by anti-aircraft defense.
New attack near Odessa
A new Russian drone attack, lasting “almost four hours”, also targeted Ukrainian port infrastructure in the Odessa region and destroyed a grain shed, the Ukrainian army said on Monday.
On the front, Kyiv claimed on Monday to have regained more than 16 km2 to Russian forces last week in the east and south of the country, nearly two months after the start of its counter-offensive.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised Sunday “reprisals” for the firing of “19 Russian missiles” on Odessa, whose historic center was listed earlier this year by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Regularly hit by Russian strikes, this port city suffered a new night attack, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, in which two people died and 22 others were injured, including at least four children.
The Cathedral of the Transfiguration was badly damaged. Collapsed walls, burned icons: this building, founded more than 200 years ago, destroyed by the Soviets in 1936, then rebuilt in the early 2000s, is devastated.
Twenty-five monuments suffered damage in Sunday’s strikes, according to regional governor Oleg Kiper. Russia has assured that it is targeting only military sites.