At least eight drones were intercepted, the Kremlin said, but the foray raised questions about Russian air defenses.
A barrage of attack drones were downed over Moscow on Tuesday, the first time civilian areas of the Russian capital have been touched directly by the Ukrainian conflict and a signal that a distant war may soon begin to feel somewhat less so for ordinary Russians.
The physical damage was minimal, limited to shattered apartment windows and some minor injuries in an upscale neighborhood, but the psychological impact may prove far bigger for a citizenry that to date has been able to go about daily life with little thought for the bloodshed taking place over the border.
“If the goal was to stress the population, then the very fact that drones have appeared in the skies over Moscow has contributed to that,” wrote one pro-war Russian blogger, Mikhail Zvinchuk, who posts under the name Rybar.
The drones, numbering at least eight, came as Russia has been engaged in a particularly sustained aerial assault on Ukraine’s own capital, Kyiv. And while President Vladimir V. Putin blamed Ukraine for what he branded “terrorist activity,” no one was killed in Moscow on Tuesday. The same could not be said for Kyiv, where one person died in the Russian attacks.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Ukraine had not been “directly involved” in the attack but was “happy” to watch the events taking place across the border. A spokesman for its air force, which typically maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity over attacks on Russian soil, declined to comment.
Russian officials and Ukrainian allies alike appeared to be choosing their words carefully in responding to the attack.
While the United States has flooded Ukraine with military equipment since the war began in February 2022, American officials have made clear that they do not want it used to hit Russian territory, lest the conflict escalate.
On Tuesday, they appeared to hedge that position a bit.
The State Department and the National Security Council both issued statements saying that the United States does not support strikes inside Russia “as a general matter,” but noting that Tuesday marked the 17th time this month that Russia had struck Kyiv.
Britain, another Ukrainian ally, went further.
Its foreign minister, James Cleverly, said that Ukraine had “the right to project force beyond its borders” to undermine Russian attacks and that military targets beyond a nation’s borders are “internationally recognized as being legitimate as part of a nation’s self-defense.” Mr. Cleverly said that he did not have details about the drone attacks and was speaking more generally.
In Moscow, where the drone incursion raised questions about Russian air defenses, Kremlin officials sought to dismiss the seriousness of the attack, even while suggesting it would lead to changes.
