Buildings damaged in drone attack, Moscow mayor claims
30 May 2023, 09:44
The attack caused ‘insignificant damage’ to several buildings in the Russian capital.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported a drone attack on the Russian capital on Tuesday.
Mr Sobyanin said in a Telegram post that the attack caused “insignificant damage” to several buildings and that “no-one has been seriously hurt”, without clarifying what it means.
Residents of two buildings damaged in the attack have been evacuated, the mayor added.
Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the wider Moscow region, said several drones were “shot down on the approach to Moscow”.
People in Moscow reported hearing explosions and the defence ministry later said that eight drones had been fired at the city in what it called a “terrorist attack” by the “Kyiv regime”.
It said five had been shot down and the systems of three were jammed, causing them to veer off course.
Ukraine has not commented on the Moscow attack, which would be one of its deepest strikes into Russia since Russia invaded Ukraine more than 15 months ago.
Since the war began, Moscow has launched unrelenting drone and missile attacks at Ukraine’s cities, frequently killing civilians.
Russia launched a pre-dawn attack on Ukraine’s capital on Tuesday as its air defences worked to stop drones in what has been a relentless wave of daylight and night-time bombardments targeting Kyiv.
The buzzing of drones and loud explosions were heard as Ukrainian air defence responded to the third Russian aerial attack on the capital in the last 24 hours.
According to preliminary data, more than 20 Shahed drones were destroyed by air defence forces in Kyiv’s airspace, the Kyiv military administration said.
One person died and three were injured when a high-rise building in the Holosiiv district caught fire.
The two upper floors were destroyed, and there may be people under the rubble, the Kiyv military administration said. More than 20 people were evacuated.
Elsewhere in the capital, falling debris caused a fire in a private house in the Darnytskyi district and three cars were set alight in the Pechersky district, according to the military administration.
The series of attacks that began on Sunday included a rare daylight attack on Monday that left puffs of white smoke in the blue skies.
Russian forces fired 11 ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv at about 11.30am, according to Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. All of them were shot down, he said.
Debris from the intercepted missiles fell in Kyiv’s central and northern districts during the morning, landing in the middle of traffic on a city road and also starting a fire on the roof of a building, the Kyiv military administration said.
At least one civilian was reported hurt.
The Russian defence ministry said it launched a series of strikes early on Monday targeting Ukrainian air bases with precision long-range air-launched missiles.
The strikes destroyed command posts, radars, aircraft and ammunition stockpiles, it claimed. It did not say anything about hitting cities or other civilian areas.
