Moscow.- Moscow has been hit by one of the largest Ukrainian drone attacks since fighting began in 2022, Russian authorities said Wednesday, claiming to have destroyed all drones heading towards the capital.
The attacks came as Ukrainian forces advance in Russia’s Kursk region. In the past week, they have also attacked three bridges, several airports and an oil depot, in a sign that they will maintain the intensity of their attacks.
On Wednesday evening, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Kursk and Ukraine, said Russian forces had repelled a Ukrainian attempt to enter the region.
Gov. Alexander Bogomaz identified the Ukrainian forces as a “sabotage and reconnaissance group” but did not specify whether they were part of the Ukrainian military. He said on Telegram that the attempted raid was in the Klimovo area, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the Kursk section held by Ukrainian forces.
“This was one of the largest attempts in history to attack Moscow using drones,” Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel. Strong defences around the capital made it possible to shoot down all the drones before they reached their targets, he added.
Russia said it destroyed 45 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 11 over the Moscow region. There was no immediate independent information to verify those figures. Some Russian social media channels shared videos of drones apparently being destroyed by air defense systems.
Ukrainian drone strikes have taken the fight away from the front lines and into the heart of Russia, targeting Moscow and Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, as well as an airport in western Russia, according to Russian officials.
Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has stepped up airstrikes on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals to stop the Kremlin from attacking.
A fire at an oil depot attacked by Ukraine burned for a fourth day on Wednesday in Rostov, a region in southwestern Russia that borders Ukraine. Priests of the Russian Orthodox Church prayed for injured firefighters as dark plumes of smoke rose from the Proletarsk depot, according to a photograph shared on social media by the Volgodonsk diocese.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has boosted morale in Ukraine with its unexpected success and changed the dynamics of the fighting. But it is also risky, as Ukrainian forces were already overstretched as the fighting spans a swath of more than 970 kilometers (600 miles). The advances in Kursk come as Ukraine continues to lose ground in the eastern Donbas region.
Russia’s state news agency Tass reported that 31 people had been killed since the Ukrainian incursion into Russia began on August 6, figures that were impossible to verify. It added that 143 people had been wounded, of whom 79 were hospitalized, four of them children.
A Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive device on a car in the Bolshesoldatsky area of Kursk, slightly northeast of the town of Sudzha, acting governor Alexei Smirnov said. One woman was killed and two others were hospitalized, he added.
Russia’s Central Election Commission announced that local elections in six districts and one city in the Kursk region scheduled for September 8 will be postponed and rescheduled when voter safety can be guaranteed.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine’s attack on Kursk had ended “any chance” of peace talks.
“Who will negotiate with them after this, after the atrocities and terror they are committing against peaceful residents, the civilian population, civilian infrastructure and peaceful facilities?” he told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday.
Ukraine says it respects the Geneva Conventions, the international humanitarian rules of warfare. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the Ukrainian military has set up an office in the Kursk region to provide humanitarian and medical aid to the local population. More than 90% of Russian civilians who remained in the Kursk territory now controlled by Ukraine are aged 60 or older, he said.
“We have no right to leave them there to die,” Klymenko was quoted as saying by the national news agency Ukrinform.
Ukrainian attacks on three bridges over the Seim River in Kursk could trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and the Ukrainian border. The strikes already appeared to be slowing the Russian response to the Kursk incursion.
Ukrainian troops appeared to be attacking Russian floating bridges and their equipment on the Seim, in an area west of the Ukrainian point of advance, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported Tuesday.
Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press on Wednesday showed a significant fire burning on the Seim near the town of Krasnooktyabrskoe.
The flames appeared to be on the north bank of the river on Tuesday, and there appeared to be another fire in the town itself. Such fires are common after airstrikes and often indicate where fighting is taking place.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had thwarted attempted attacks by Ukrainian assault groups in the Kursk region, Tass reported. The Russian military reported that more than 45 soldiers had been killed or wounded in the past 24 hours, and two were captured while trying to attack the Kursk region, Tass said. There was no immediate independent confirmation of those figures or comment from the Ukrainian side.
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