Ukraine fired scores of attack drones at western regions of Russia—including Moscow—in the early hours of Sept. 10, killing at least one person and causing significant material damage, Russian officials said.
“Overnight, during the Kyiv regime’s attempt to carry out a terror attack on targets in Russia with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, air-defense systems on duty eliminated and intercepted 144 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs,” Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run TASS news agency.
According to the ministry, varying numbers of Ukrainian drones were intercepted in nine western regions of Russia, including 20 in the Moscow region alone.
At least some incoming drones, however, appear to have dodged Russian air defenses.
In Moscow’s Ramenskoye district, residential buildings were damaged, setting several apartments on fire, TASS reported.
At least one resident was killed—a 46-year-old woman—and another three people were injured, according to regional governor Andrei Vorobyov.
Footage posted on social media shows plumes of flame bursting from the windows of a multifloor residential building in Ramenskoye.
“I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” local resident Alexander Li told Reuters. “The window got blown out by the shockwave.”
In a subsequent statement, Vorobyov said residents of the impacted area had since been evacuated to temporary accommodation centers.
Russia’s official aviation authority said that three Moscow airports suspended operations immediately after the attack and were forced to reroute incoming flights.
However, as of 8 a.m. local time, the aviation authority reported that airport operations had resumed.
The defense ministry said Ukrainian drones had also been intercepted over Russia’s western Bryansk, Kursk, Tula, Belgorod, Kaluga, Voronezh, Lipetsk, and Oryol regions.
‘Revenge’ Attack
In televised remarks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kyiv’s wide-ranging drone attack was reflective of Ukraine’s deteriorating battlefield position.“The weaker the Kyiv regime becomes on the battlefield, despite receiving massive financial and military support [from the West], the more it seeks revenge by engaging in criminal terrorist activities,” Zakharova said.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have registered significant gains in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, where they now appear poised to capture the strategic town of Pokrovsk.
Kyiv has yet to comment on the Sept. 10 drone attack.
But in an earlier statement, Ukrainian officials said three people were injured by overnight Russian drone and missile strikes across Ukraine.
On Sept. 1, Ukraine carried out an attack involving more than 150 drones on multiple targets in western Russia, including the capital.
That attack caused limited damage to energy facilities in Moscow and in the neighboring region of Tver but did not result in deaths or injuries.
In 2022, Russia invaded and effectively annexed broad swaths of eastern and southeastern Ukraine.
With support from its powerful Western allies, Kyiv has vowed to continue fighting the Russian invasion until all lost territory is recovered.
Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declined Kyiv’s request for permission to use Western-supplied munitions to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.
“There’s no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign,” Austin said at a Sept. 6 meeting of Kyiv’s allies in Germany.
“There are a lot of targets in Russia—[it’s] a big country,” he told reporters.
“And there’s a lot of capability that Ukraine has, in terms of UAVs and other things, to address those targets.”
