The drone attack, which was confirmed by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, occurred just hours after yet another barrage of Russian airstrikes on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, which killed at least one person and injured more than a dozen.
Kyiv has been under a relentless assault of near-nightly bombings in recent weeks with Moscow seemingly intent on weakening or destroying Ukraine’s air defenses ahead of a much-anticipated counteroffensive that President Volodymyr Zelensky has said will oust the Russian invaders from Ukraine’s territory.
While Ukraine denied involvement in the drone attack on Moscow, the dueling strikes on the capital cities appeared to mark a threshold moment, as residents of Russia’s capital experienced direct consequences of their nation’s brutal hostilities for the first time.
Increased shelling of Russian towns in the Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday offered further evidence that Kyiv is intent on bringing the the war to Russian territory before initiating offensive operations that will inevitably cause further death and destruction in Ukraine.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, said Moscow residents deserved whatever came at them.
“I’m going to say some paradoxical things and you can then analyze them: First, undoubtedly, gradually Moscow is starting to sink into the fog of war … with a very desired sensation,” Podolyak said Tuesday morning during Breakfast Show, a Ukrainian Russian-language YouTube program. “Of course we want those people who wanted to start this big European war to feel what it is like to live in state of danger.”
“And of course all those terrible men who sat in the parliament and threatened everyone,” Podolyak added, “they are going to gradually receive all of that back.”
In early May, two drones were intercepted over the Kremlin in an unsuccessful attack that Moscow blamed on Ukraine and claimed was an attempt to assassinate Putin. He was not in the building at the time.
Kyiv has faced a persistent threat of missile strikes since Oct. 10 when Russia unleashed a wave of 84 cruise missiles. And on Tuesday, for the third time in 24 hours, explosions rang out across the Ukrainian capital before dawn, sending sleepless Kyiv residents for cover once again.
The relentless air raids assaults — 17 in the past month, using powerful missiles and self-destructing drones — have jolted Kyiv residents from their sleep almost every other night, wearing out families in what has become a frightening if now terribly familiar routine.
Hours after Tuesday’s attack in Kyiv, Sobyanin said drones struck two residential buildings Moscow causing minor damage. Writing on Telegram, the mayor said residents had been evacuated and that two people had sought medical attention but that there had been no serious injuries. Footage from the scene showed fire damage to the outside of a top-floor apartment and broken windows.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the military had shot down eight drones. According to Baza, a Telegram channel linked to Russia’s security services, more than 10 drones were shot down in the Moscow region, most of them in the Istrinsky, Krasnogorsky and Odintsovsky districts, to the west of the capital.
“The Kyiv regime staged a terrorist attack with unmanned aerial vehicles on sites in the city of Moscow this morning,” the Defense Ministry said in statement. “Eight plane-type drones were used in the attack. All enemy drones were shot down.”
The statement added that some of the drones had lost control after their signals were jammed, while others were shot down by Pantsir surface-to-air missile defense systems, which are now strategically stationed throughout the Moscow region, including in the city center.
In all, more than 25 drones were reportedly involved in the morning attack. Some flew at ultralow altitude and got snared on trees and wires. Videos circulating on social media showed low-flying drones exploding in fields and intercepted by air defenses, with some flying over Moscow’s Rublyovka district, an exclusive neighborhood that is favored by the Russian government and business elite.
For the 15 months since Putin ordered the invasion, Muscovites have primarily witnessed the war — which the Kremlin euphemistically calls a “special military operation” — on television or the internet. While residents of border regions in western Russia have experienced cross-border drone strikes and other attacks, the capital has been largely spared.
Kyiv’s denials notwithstanding, the attack on Moscow shows Ukraine and its supporters are intent on bringing the fight directly to the doorstep of Russian citizens, and signals a greater willingness to deploy hybrid tactics.
The United States has signaled displeasure at cross-border attacks and urged Ukraine not to use American-provided weapons to attack Russia on its own soil fearing an escalation that would bring NATO countries into a direct confrontation. Kyiv, however, has said it reserves the right to defend its territory as it deems necessary.
Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Defense Committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, told Russian business daily RBC that the attack was designed to “raise a wave of panic” and that it was “an act of terror, aimed at the civilian population.”
Kartapolov added the attack had happened “because we have a very large country and there is always a loophole where a drone can fly through.”
But there has been little sympathy voiced in the Duma or on Russian state-controlled television for the terror-inducing missile strikes on Kyiv.
A popular pro-war Russian blogger, who publishes under the pen-name Rybar, wrote: “If the purpose of the raid was to stress out the population, then the very fact that Ukrainian drones appeared in the sky over Moscow has contributed to this.”
In terms of the scale of the attacks — and casualties — there was virtually no comparison. On Tuesday, Russia attacked Ukraine with 31 Iranian-made drones over the course of five hours, almost all of them headed toward Kyiv, Ukrainian air defense forces wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine’s armed forces successfully destroyed 29 of the drones as they approached the skies over the capital.
Falling debris from one of the intercepted drones killed a 33-year-old woman and injured at least 13 people in the city and surrounding region, said Ivan Vyhivskyi, acting head of Ukraine’s national police.
Dozens of residents reported damage to homes, offices, shops, garages and cars, according to Andryi Nebytov, head of Kyiv’s regional police.
“They are trying to hit Kyiv; they are trying to prove something,” Yuryi Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air defense, told The Washington Post. “But as you can see, the air defense is working.”
On Monday, a rare daytime missile attack sent thousands of Kyiv residents rushing into subway stations and injured at least one person. The missiles, which were all shot down by Ukraine’s air defenses, pierced the relative calm in the bustling capital, where playgrounds and restaurant patios have been packed with families and friends enjoying the recent arrival of warm weather.
Later that day, Kostiantyn Vashchenko, Ukrainian state secretary for defense, linked the Russian bombardment of Kyiv with the long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“Russia clearly understands our readiness for an offensive,” Vashchenko said, adding that it was an attempt to hit the country’s decision-making center ahead of the counterattack. Offensive operations could begin “very soon,” he said during the GlobSec security forum in Bratislava. “Sooner than you think … several days.”
Ukrainian military officials said that Russia is trying use drones to pinpoint the location of Ukraine’s air defense systems, and then tries to hit then them with more precise and powerful weapons, including ballistic missiles.
“With the drones, they are trying to provoke the maximum reaction, as you see from the number of drones they sent, to detect all the air defense positions and directions, to draw themselves a map of the entire operation, so that they can then hit in particular with more precise rockets or ballistic missiles,” Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern command told Ukraine’s Channel 5 television station on Tuesday morning.
In the Holosivskyi district of Kyiv, a leafy residential area, falling debris destroyed the top three floors of a 21-story apartment building, crumbling brick walls and blowing out windows.
The explosion overhead shook the entire building and sent residents rushing for cover in bathrooms and closets and in the parking lot. One woman, who lived on one of the top floors, was killed in the attack, a neighbor said, while at least four others were injured. Police on the scene declined to confirm the details, citing an ongoing investigation.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the woman had been killed by debris after she went out onto her balcony to watch the strike. Klitschko warned residents not to do this and to heed air raid warnings.
At about 11 a.m. Tuesday morning, residents lined up outside the damaged apartment building, waiting in line to return to their homes. Children played in a playground littered with pieces of debris.
Oksana Snyhirova, 48, who lives on the ninth floor, said she and her family hid in a built-in wardrobe in their apartment when they heard the explosion.
“We practice the two-wall rule,” she said. “When there’s rockets, we usually go down to the parking lot. But you have to understand … we’re a bit tired.”
After 17 recent airstrikes, almost all of them in the middle of the night, residents here and across Kyiv have settled into a routine each time they hear an explosion: Check Telegram for news, and depending on the type of weapon being used, decide whether to take cover, or to simply to go back to sleep.
Oleh Balenko, a 63-year-old grandfather, had rushed to the scene from a nearby village to help his daughter, her husband and eight-year-old granddaughter, who live on the 14th floor.
“They were hiding in the bathroom,” he said, visibly shaken. “For some reason they had this thing where if it was a rocket attack, they would go down to the underground parking lot. But if it was a drone they would think it would just be shot down and would just go to the bathroom. I think that will change now.”
Valeria Korzhyva, 26, who lives with her husband on the 19th floor, had initially hidden in the bathroom, but then fled down the stairs.
“Normally we go down to the bottom of the building, but this time we thought it wouldn’t be necessary,” Korzhyva said. “It was late. We were very tired and then it all happened.”
Koshiw reporter from Kyiv, Ukraine, Ebel from London, and Schmidt from Lviv, Ukraine. Natalia Abbakomova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
