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Russia says Ukraine has launched its biggest drone attack yet on Moscow and the surrounding region, ahead of key peace talks between Ukraine and the US due to take place in Saudi Arabia.
A total of 337 Ukrainian drones were downed over Russia on Tuesday, including 91 over the Moscow region and 126 over the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been pulling back, the defence ministry said.
The attack has killed at least one person so far, as well as sparking fires, closing airports and forcing dozens of flights to be diverted, Russian officials said.
The massive dawn drone assault comes as Russian forces continue to try and encircle thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the western Russian region of Kursk.
As rush hour built, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences were still repelling attacks on the city, which along with the surrounding region has a population of at least 21 million and is one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Europe.
“The most massive attack of enemy UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) on Moscow has been repelled,” Sobyanin said in a post on Telegram.
Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said at least one person was killed and three injured, and he posted a picture of a wrecked apartment with its windows blown out.
Vorobyov said that some residents were forced to evacuate a multi-storey building in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, about 50 km southeast of the Kremlin — which is the official residence of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
There was no sign of panic in Moscow as commuters went to work as normal across central parts of the city.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said flights were suspended at all four of Moscow’s airports to ensure air safety after the attacks. Two other airports, in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions, both east of Moscow, were also closed.
Though US President Donald Trump says he wants to deliver peace in Ukraine, the war is heating up on the battlefield with a major Russian spring offensive in Kursk and a series of Ukrainian drone attacks that have been launched deep inside Russian territory.
Russia has developed a myriad of electronic “umbrellas” over Moscow and over key installations, with additional advanced internal layers covering strategic buildings, and a complex web of air defences to shoot down the drones before they reach the Kremlin in the heart of the capital.
Kyiv, itself the target of repeated mass drone strikes from Russian forces, has tried to strike back against its vastly larger eastern neighbour with repeated drone strikes against oil refineries, airfields and even Russian strategic early-warning radar stations.
