The drones that attacked Moscow and its region in the early hours of Tuesday were launched from Ukrainian territory, according to a senior official of the Russian anti-aircraft defense system.
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“The drones that on the night of August 1 tried to attack Moscow and the Moscow region flew from the territory of Ukraine”the officer told the TASS agency on condition of anonymity.
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This information was confirmed by a source in the emergency services, which means that the drones covered at least 500 kilometers of Russian airspace, the minimum distance between the Russian capital and the border with Ukraine.
The deputy and leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Leonid Slutski, opined that the drones were launched from Russian territory.
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“It is clear that the drones are being launched by a network of agents operating on our territory,” said the lawmaker, chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.
He expressed his confidence that the Russian Defense Ministry’s response to Ukraine will not be long in coming. “It’s time to set fire to the decision-making centers to burn that Nazi garbage once and for all”Slutski stressed.
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In the attack on Tuesday, which caused no casualties, a drone hit the windows of the 21st floor façade of one of the skyscrapers that make up the modern financial center of Moscow City, two of whose towers were damaged last Saturday in a similar attack, according to the mayor of the Russian capital, Sergei Sobyanin.
“After the first attack, everyone was saying: ‘they won’t hit the same place twice’, but this morning we woke up in shock (…) I’m not sure if I’m going to move, but I think so “said a resident of the neighborhood, Anastasia Berseneva, 26, who woke up to the explosion.
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The Russian Ministry of Defense reported, in turn, that the anti-aircraft defense forces shot down two drones in the Moscow region: one in the Odintsovo district and the other in the Naro-Fominsk district, where the Defense Division is located. Motorized Infantry No. 2, one of the elite units of the Russian Army.
“Another drone was inhibited by means of electronic warfare, lost its way and crashed on the territory of the Moscow City office building complex,” it added.
As on Sunday, Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport was briefly closed, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
On the other hand, the Russian army claimed to have repelled an attack by three naval drones against its patrol boats in the Black Sea during the night.
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The area has been under tension since Russia withdrew from the grain export agreement in July. According to the Russian ministry, the three devices were destroyed.
A slow counteroffensive
Ukraine has increased drone strikes on Russian soil in recent weeks, paralleling a slow and difficult counter-offensive in Russian-occupied eastern and southern Ukraine.
Specific, attacks on the Russian capital and its surroundings have multiplied since the beginning of the year and in May one of them even reached the Kremlin.
There were also several attacks against the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014 by Russia, which affected key bridges for the supply of Russian forces fighting against Ukraine.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that “the war is returning to the territory of Russia.”
In Russia’s Belgorod region, neighboring Ukraine, the governor said the area was again under artillery fire.
The attacks in Belgorod are part of the counter-offensive launched in June by Ukraine, armed with Western equipment, to recover the territories occupied by Russia. But progress so far has been very slow because the Ukrainian army is facing Russian defensive lines, made up of trenches, anti-tank traps and minefields.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claims day after day that the Ukrainian offensive is a failure. Putin recently faced an unprecedented armed rebellion by troops from the Wagner paramilitary group against the military hierarchy..
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The Russian military is trying to show its robustness and on Tuesday broadcast footage of the chief of staff and commander of operations in Ukraine, Valery Gerasimov, inspecting a command post in the occupied part of the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine.
This Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Russia continues to intensify its bombardments and early Monday morning, Krivóy Rog, the hometown of the Ukrainian president, in the center of the country, was the target of two Russian missiles.
One of them destroyed part of a building and killed six people, including a 10-year-old girl and her mother, in addition to injuring 75. This Tuesday Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, was also attacked by Russian drones.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP and EFE
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