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Two skyscrapers in Moscow’s premier business district have been damaged by drone strikes that sparked a fireball and left charred holes in the side of the buildings, in the latest attack on the Russian capital.
Videos taken on Sunday by eyewitnesses showed a drone flying between the high rises of the Moscow City business area before crashing, causing an explosion at the base of one of the towers. Another video taken from inside one of the buildings showed a destroyed office space scattered with debris.
The district, which is grouped on the embankment of the Moscow river on the western edge of the city, is home to leading Russian companies, such as VTB Bank and Norilsk Nickel.
Sunday’s attack marks at least the fifth time that unmanned aerial vehicles have reached Moscow since May, when two of the aircraft were shot down over the Kremlin. Others have hit buildings in suburban areas, and six days ago drones also crashed into more centrally located buildings, including an office block.
“Tonight there was an attack by Ukrainian drones. The facades on two city office towers were slightly damaged,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, adding there had been no casualties.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility from Kyiv. Ukraine, which was invaded by Russian forces last year, has tended not to take direct credit for attacks by UAVs and other strikes on Russian territory that have also targeted fuel depots and air bases.
Kyiv’s military intelligence service declined to comment on the Moscow City strikes, which bring the war closer to home for Russians and forces their army to keep some air defence resources away from the front lines in order to protect the capital and vulnerable installations.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister leading the programme to build a “drone army”, said in a Telegram channel post after a previous UAV strike on Moscow that it demonstrated that “electronic warfare and air defence are less and less able to protect the skies of the occupiers”.
Lieutenant-general Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former head of Ukraine’s GUR military and foreign intelligence services, claimed Sunday’s attack had been launched from within Russia by what he called “tech partisans” using “asymmetric hybrid warfare techniques”.
“These patriots are testing their drones not on military training grounds, but in real-time war scenarios on the territory of the enemy,” he said, adding that the newly developed range of drones can cost $20,000 each.
He also claimed that the Moscow City buildings that were hit were “actually offices of Russia’s GRU military intelligence services”.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed the drones used in Sunday’s attack lost control and crashed after they had been suppressed by its electromagnetic defences.
“One Ukrainian drone was destroyed in the air by air defence means over the territory of the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region,” the ministry said.
“Two more drones were suppressed by electronic warfare means and, having lost control, crashed on the territory of the complex of non-residential buildings in Moscow City,” it added.
The defence ministry also claimed to have taken down 25 drones over the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.
Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, one of its three main airports, was briefly closed to flights as a result of the attack.
Tass state news agency reported that the fifth and sixth floors of the IQ-Quarter 50-storey office block in Moscow City were damaged, as was the fourth floor of the Oko-2 tower.
President Vladimir Putin was informed of the attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited by Tass as saying. The Russian president was in Saint Petersburg on Sunday for a parade of the Navy.
Speaking a day earlier at the conclusion of his summit with African leaders, Putin claimed Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive had been halted by Russian forces.
He also welcomed discussions on a peace proposal for the Ukraine war presented by a group of African leaders and said there were similarities between the proposal and a plan outlined by China. Putin also said Russia would begin deliveries of grain to Africa in the next three to four months.
