Two separate drone attacks in the Moscow region temporarily disrupted air traffic over the Russian capital on Aug. 21 and left two people injured, according to Russian authorities.
“This morning, air defenses intercepted two drones in the west and northwest of the Moscow region,” Moscow Gov. Andrey Vorobyov said in a statement.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the first attack occurred at 6:50 a.m. local time, when a drone crashed in the city’s Ruza district after being disabled by electronic jamming systems.
No casualties or material damage were reported.
Roughly 90 minutes later, a second drone crashed into a private residence in the Istra district after being shot down by air defenses, the ministry said.
According to statements released by the local authorities, two residents suffered minor injuries from broken glass.
“Emergency services and law enforcement are working at the scene,” Tatiana Vitusheva, municipal head of the district, said on social media.
As of press time, officials in Kyiv hadn’t commented on the incident.
Air Traffic Disrupted
Dozens of flights to and from Moscow were delayed or rerouted in the immediate wake of the attacks.“Forty-five passenger flights and two cargo flights were redirected to alternative airports in Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and St. Petersburg,” Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said in a statement.
By 9 a.m., however, Moscow’s four primary airports—Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, and Zhukovsky—were all operating as usual, while all airspace restrictions had been lifted.
Drone attacks on targets in Moscow—and other regions of Russia—have become increasingly common in recent days and weeks.
Only two days before the latest attack, a disabled drone crashed in Moscow’s Krasnogorsk district without causing damage, the Defense Ministry said.
Late last month, a drone was downed in central Moscow near a defense ministry building. Days later, one of the city’s leading financial districts was struck by drones twice in the space of three days.
Although such attacks seldom result in deaths or serious injuries, Russian officials view them as “acts of terrorism” by Ukraine.
Kyiv, for its part, typically hails such attacks—and often warns of “more to come”—while never explicitly claiming responsibility.
Following earlier drone attacks on Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war is “returning to Russian territory–to its symbolic centers.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelenskyy, warned Russia that it should expect “more unidentified drones.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has repeatedly said that it “does not encourage or enable attacks inside Russia.”
Cross-Border Attacks
Moscow, however, hasn’t been the only target of increasingly frequent drone attacks.Western regions of Russia that border Ukraine—especially Belgorod, Rostov, and Kursk—have also been plagued by repeated unmanned aerial attacks.
On Aug. 20, local officials in all three regions reported multiple drone attacks, which, they said, caused varying degrees of damage.
In the city of Kursk, an aerial drone struck a railway station, injuring five and setting the station ablaze, according to the local governor’s office.
In Belgorod, where such attacks are almost a daily occurrence, three drones were reportedly downed without causing damage.
On the same day, two areas of the southern Rostov region came under attack by “kamikaze” drones, which, according to the regional governor, failed to cause casualties.
Rostov-on-Don, the region’s capital, currently serves as the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District.
Rostov shares borders with Donetsk and Luhansk, which together comprise the Russian-speaking Donbas region.
Last September, Russia effectively annexed Donbas, along with the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and now views them all as Russian Federation territory.
On Aug. 21, the governor of Russia’s western Kaluga region—which doesn’t border Ukraine—said a drone had been downed in the region’s Kirovsky district without causing damage or casualties.
The Epoch Times couldn’t independently verify the Russian assertions.
