Russia yesterday accused Ukraine of launching what appeared to be the biggest drone attack on Russian soil since Moscow invaded Ukraine 18 months ago, followed by a Russian attack on Kyiv that Ukrainian officials said killed two people.
Drones hit an airport in Russia’s western Pskov region near the border with Estonia and Latvia, and started a massive fire, the governor and local media reported.
More drones were shot down over Oryol, Bryansk, Ryazan, Kaluga and the Moscow region surrounding the Russian capital, the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
Photo: Reuter
Pskov Governor Mikhail Vedernikov ordered all flights to and from the airport in the region’s namesake capital canceled so the damage could be assessed during daylight.
The airport strike, which was first reported minutes before midnight, damaged four Il-76 transport aircraft, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials.
Footage and images posted on social media showed smoke billowing over the city of Pskov and a large blaze.
Vedernikov said that there were no casualties and the fire had been contained.
Unconfirmed media reports said that between 10 and 20 drones could have attacked the airport.
In Kyiv, falling debris killed two people and injured another after Russia launched a “massive combined attack” on the Ukrainian capital using drones and missiles, head of the Ukrainian military administration Sergei Popko wrote on Telegram.
In what Popko said was the biggest attack since spring, Russia launched Shahed drones at Kyiv from multiple directions and then targeted the capital with missiles from Tu-95MS strategic aircraft.
He said that more than 20 targets had been brought down by Ukraine’s air defenses.
It was unclear how many had been launched.
The deaths and injury occurred when debris fell on a commercial building in Shevchenkivskyi District, Popko said.
Explosions in Ukraine were also reported in the southern city of Odesa and the Cherkasy region.
Ukraine’s air defenses destroyed 28 cruise missiles and 15 of 16 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones targeting the capital and multiple regions across the country overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said in its daily Telegram update.
It said that 43 air targets had been downed over Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south of the country.
The statement did not say what happened to the other drone.
In Russia, Pskov was the only region reporting substantial damage.
In Kaluga, one drone was brought down and another hit an empty oil reservoir, causing a fire that was quickly extinguished, Kaluga Governor Vladislav Shapsha said.
Residential windows were shattered, Shapsha said.
In the Bryansk region, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said that six drones were downed overnight.
One of them damaged an administrative building, prompting a brief fire, he said.
Two were targeting a television tower, but were brought down, he added.
Russian media earlier on Wednesday cited local residents as saying they heard a loud explosion.
Two drones were downed over the Oryol region, said Andrei Klychkov, the region’s governor.
Two more were downed over the Ryazan region and one over the Moscow region, officials said.
Outside Moscow, three main airports — Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo and Domodedovo — temporarily halted incoming and outgoing flights, a measure that has become routine in the wake of the drone attacks.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who usually refuse to take responsibility for any attacks on Russian soil.
Elsewhere, Russian-installed officials in Crimea reported repelling an attack of drones targeting the harbor of the port city of Sevastopol.
Moscow-appointed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozzhayev said that it was not immediately clear how many of the drones had been destroyed.
It was not immediately clear if the attack caused any damage.
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