Overnight, Ukraine attempted to carry out a drone attack on Moscow, according to Russian authorities on Sunday. This comes just a day after Ukrainian officials reported that Russia conducted its most intense drone assault on Kyiv since the onset of the full-scale war in 2022.
Russian air defenses successfully intercepted and brought down at least 24 drones over the Moscow region, along with four other provinces to the south and west, as reported by the Russian Defense Ministry and Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin in a series of updates on Telegram. No casualties were mentioned.
Andrei Vorobyev, governor of the Moscow region, stated on Telegram that the drone strikes caused damage to three unspecified buildings in the region, emphasizing that no injuries were reported.
A drone crashed into a 12-story apartment block in the western Russian city of Tula, approximately 113 miles south of Moscow. Local Governor Aleksei Dyumin reported on Telegram on Sunday morning that the incident resulted in minor injuries to one resident and caused limited damage.
Moscow’s Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports briefly shut down due to the drone attack, as reported by Russia’s state-run news agency Tass. Flight tracking data from international portals indicated that both airports had resumed normal operation by 6 a.m. local time.
Speculation on Russian Telegram channels suggested that Ukrainian forces might have used a previously unseen type of drone in the alleged strike, noting some similarities to Iranian-made drones routinely employed by Moscow in its attacks on Ukraine.
The Russian capital has experienced drone attacks since May, with Russian officials attributing them to Ukraine. Military analysts previously noted that early attacks involved locally made Ukrainian drones, which could not carry as heavy a payload as the Iranian-made Shaheds used by Russia.
As of late Sunday morning, Ukrainian officials had not acknowledged or commented on the reported drone strikes. The attacks occurred a day after Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital with over 60 Shahed drones, causing injuries to at least five civilians during the hours-long assault. The incident resulted in damage to several buildings from falling debris, including a kindergarten, and the wounded included an 11-year-old child, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Early on Sunday, the Ukrainian air force claimed to have successfully intercepted eight out of nine Shahed drones launched by Russian forces overnight.
In response, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that two Soviet-made S-200 rockets fired by Kyiv were shot down over the Sea of Azov, located between Crimea and Ukraine’s Russian-occupied southeastern coast.
Air raid sirens were reportedly activated in Russian-annexed Crimea, which had experienced a significant drone attack on Friday, according to Russian officials. Traffic on the 12-mile bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland was briefly halted on Sunday morning.
No casualties were reported, and there was no official response from authorities in Kyiv.
In Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, parts of the Donetsk region experienced a power outage following a Ukrainian strike on a thermal power plant in the area, according to Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed local official who leads the province illegally annexed by Russia last year. The Starobesheve plant’s attack disrupted electricity in parts of the occupied cities of Donetsk and Mariupol, as well as surrounding areas.
Russian troops on the outskirts of Donetsk continued their efforts to advance near Avdiivka, a town in the east that has been a Ukrainian stronghold and a focal point of fighting since the beginning of the war. Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, successfully repelled Russian assaults in the northeast, west, and southwest of Avdiivka over the past 24 hours as Moscow’s troops strive to encircle the city.
There are unconfirmed claims from Russian bloggers that Ukrainian forces started withdrawing from the industrial zone on Avdiivka’s southern flank, while others suggest that Russian troops do not have complete control of the area. These claims have not been independently verified.
Russian shelling resulted in the deaths of two civilians in the Donetsk region on Saturday and overnight, as reported by acting Ukrainian Governor Ihor Moroz on Sunday morning via Telegram. Additionally, during the same period, Russian shells wounded one person in Ukraine’s northern Sumy province, which shares a border with Russia, according to a Telegram update from the Ukrainian regional military command.
