Flights from civilian airports in Moscow were temporarily restricted in the evening on March 17 after authorities said that two Ukrainian drones had struck a building in the Russian airport.
The fire started after hitting the warehouse. Tonight, drones massively attacked Moscow and five other Russian regions.
According to the mayor of the Russian capital, Sergei Sobyanin, air defence failed to shot down two UAVs in Domodedovo and one each in the Ramensky and Stupinsky urban districts.
“The air defence forces of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation in the urban district of Domodedovo failed to repell the attack of two drones that flew to Moscow. According to preliminary data, there is one building destroyed and casualties were reported in the area.
The drone also crashed into the Expo Center complex in a nonresidential district a few kilometers west of the city center. The drone, which the Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down, reportedly caused a powerful explosion and sent emergency workers scrambling to the scene.
Air traffic at four major civilian airports in and around Moscow was suspended briefly following the incident, but flights were reportedly operating normally within an hour.
Moscow has been targeted regularly by drone strikes in recent months as Kyiv continues its counteroffensive to regain Ukrainian territory lost to Russian forces in the course of the 18-month-long war.
A drone was destroyed over the Kremlin and civilian areas of Moscow were hit in separate incidents in May. Earlier this month, a Moscow business district was targeted twice.
On the battlefront, Ukrainian military officials on March 17 claimed success in an offensive in the eastern Donetsk region and said one Russian warship had hit by a Ukrainian sea drone in the Black Sea.
Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, announced they had liberated the village of Urozhayne, a village on the edge of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that an attack by a Ukrainian sea drone had occurred just before 11 p.m. local time on the Black Sea about 240 kilometers southwest of Sevastopol, but was thwarted.
Ukraine’s Western backers have trained and supplied as many as nine new brigades in hopes that Ukrainian forces could successfully retake territory occupied by Russian forces, but two months into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Kyiv’s forces have struggled to break through formidable Russian defensive lines in the southern Zaporizhzhya region and in the eastern Donetsk region.
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