At least four people killed in Russia as Ukraine launches retaliatory strikes | Russia
At least four people were killed and a dozen others were injured in Ukraine’s largest-ever retaliatory drone strike on Russian regions including Moscow, Russian officials said.
Nearly 600 Ukrainian drones hit 14 regions of Russia overnight, as well as the Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas, the Russian defense ministry said on Sunday, with the region around the capital among the worst affected.
Officials said three people were killed in the Moscow region and one in the Belgorod region, as Russian air defenses shot down 556 UAVs during the night and neutralized 30 UAVs after dawn.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the attacks, saying the drones flew more than 500 km (310 miles) from Ukrainian territory and that Ukraine “overcame” Russian air defense systems concentrated in and around Moscow.
“Our reaction to Russia’s prolongation of the war and its attacks on our cities and communities is fully justified,” he said, adding that the attacks on Moscow showed that Kiev was “clearly telling the Russians: their state must end the war.”
Zelenskyy said last week there would be more drone strikes in retaliation for Russia’s deadly three-day offensive across Ukraine that killed more than 20 people and injured nearly 50 others. Russia has repeatedly launched similar attacks on Ukraine’s capital and other cities during the war.
Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman was killed in Khimki, north of Moscow, in what he described as a “major” attack on a house in the area surrounding but not including the capital.
Vorobyov said rescuers were still searching for another person in the rubble. He added that two men were also killed and several residential buildings and “infrastructure facilities” were damaged in the village of Pogorelki, six miles north of Moscow, when drone debris fell on a construction site.
“Since 3 o’clock this morning, air defense forces have been repelling a large-scale UAV. [unmanned aerial vehicle] “An attack on the capital region,” Vorobyov said, adding that four people were injured. India’s Moscow embassy said that one of its citizens was among the dead.
The mayor of the city, Sergei Sobyanin, said in his post on social media that air defense systems in the capital seized more than 80 UAVs overnight. He said 12 people were injured and “minor damage” was recorded where the debris fell.
One of the strikes injured construction workers and damaged three houses at a facility near Moscow’s oil and gas refinery, Sobyanin said, adding that refinery production was not interrupted and the refinery’s “technology” was not affected.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said an oil refinery and two pumping stations around Moscow were hit. It was stated that the attacks “reduced the enemy’s ability to continue the war” and showed that “even the very well-defended Moscow region is not safe.”
Russia’s largest airport – Sheremetyevo in Moscow – said drone debris fell around it without causing any damage.
The Moscow region is frequently attacked by drones, but the city itself, about 250 miles from the Ukrainian border, is targeted less frequently. Authorities said one person was killed in a drone attack on a truck in the Belgorod region on the Ukrainian border.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles in successive waves of attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Ukrainian officials said.
A cruise missile crashed into a nine-storey apartment block in Kiev on Thursday, killing 24 people, including three children.
Ukrainian air force announced on Sunday that 279 more Russian UAVs were captured overnight, out of a total of 287 launched.
Moscow and Kiev have returned to trade attacks since the end last Tuesday of a three-day ceasefire to mark the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, which each side accused the other of violating.
Diplomatic efforts to end the four-year conflict have come to a halt, with Kiev unwilling to accept Moscow’s maximalist demands for territory in the eastern Donbas region and US attention turning to the US-Israeli war against Iran.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
