Russia claimed on Monday that it neutralized two Ukrainian drones over Moscow overnight, one of which crashed near the Ministry of Defence. At the same time, there were bombings in Crimea and in the Odesa region, in southern Ukraine.
The Moscow region had not been attacked by drones for almost three weeks.
The attack came after kyiv vowed to respond to Russian shelling in Odessa last weekend, that caused two deaths and destroyed a cathedral.
“Two Ukrainian drones were neutralized and crashed. There are no casualties,” said the Russian Defense Ministry, which accused Kiev of carrying out a “terrorist act.”
One of the artifacts fell on an important road in the Russian capital, Komsomolsky Prospekt, near the Ministry of Defence.
A Ukrainian defense source, who requested anonymity, told AFP that the attack on Moscow was “a special operation of the GUR”, the Ukrainian military intelligence services.
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AFP journalists saw a building with a damaged roof and several vehicles of the security forces and fire trucks and an ambulance deployed on the scene. The police cordoned off the area.
“I wasn’t sleeping. It was 3:39 in the morning. The house really shook,” Vladimir, a 70-year-old neighbor, told AFP. “ANDIt is scandalous that a Ukrainian drone almost flew into the Ministry of Defenseto,” he added.
Anton Kashirin, a 32-year-old waiter at a nearby coffee shop, downplayed the incident, calling it “not very dangerous.” “I’m calm, it’s over and that’s it. It’s nothing new or the first time this has happened,” he said.
Another drone hit the business center on Likhacheva street, where an AFP photographer saw several broken windows at the top of a large building.
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Moscow and its region, which are located more than 500 km from the Ukrainian border, have already been attacked by drones on other occasions. In May, one of these assaults reached the Kremlin.
On July 4, five drones were shot down in the Moscow region, according to authorities. The attack disrupted the operation of the Vnukovo International Airport.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the attack as an “international terrorist act”. while his counterpart in the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, assured that Russia will continue the war in Ukraine until it achieves its objectives.
The Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation, Mikhailo Fedorov, for his part, confirmed the attacks against Moscow, and suggested that “there will be more”.
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This attack in Moscow is added to those registered for a week in Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow, and in southern Ukraine, where tensions escalated after Russia decided last Monday to withdraw from an agreement to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.
In Crimea, a Ukrainian drone strike hit an ammunition depot on Monday in the Dzhankoi district, in the north of the annexed peninsula, Russian Governor Sergei Asksionov reported Monday. The population in a radius of 5 km around the depot was temporarily evacuated, he said.
Railroad circulation was also suspended for a few hours, and was later restored. According to the Russian army, 14 Ukrainian drones were neutralized in Crimea with interference equipment and another three, for the anti-aircraft defense.
Russia attacks Danube ports
At the same time, Russia directed its attacks against the Ukrainian agricultural sector for the first time on Monday towards a port on the Danube river and destroyed several grain stores in the Ukraine.
The attack took place against the port of Reni on the Danube river with about 15 Iranian Shahed-136 drones, according to the head of this community bordering Romania, Igor Plejov, quoted by the information portal “Reni-Odesa”.
The shelling lasted almost four hours into the early morning, the Southern Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said. According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, at least four grain “hangars”, oil and fuel storage depots and an administrative building were damaged or destroyed.
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The head of the Military Administration of the Odessa region, Oleg Kiper, explained in turn that six people were injured, one of them in a relatively serious condition.
The Danube River is one of the alternative transport routes for Ukrainian cereals facing the Black Sea -turned back into a conflict zone after Russia canceled navigation guarantees-, although insufficient to compensate for the volumes that were sent through Turkey to other parts of the world.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that he was already preparing new aid packages with Western partners to improve the country’s air defense and receive more artillery and long-range weapons.
He also announced the convening of a meeting on Wednesday of the Otán-Ukraine Council to discuss the steps to be taken to unblock the grain corridor in the Black Sea.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and EFE
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