Mayor says no damage or casualties reported as 11 drones are downed
Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. I’m Tom Ambrose.
Russian air defences shot down 11 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow, “one of the largest” such strikes ever against the capital, officials said on Wednesday.
“Eleven drones were destroyed” over Moscow and its surrounding region, the defence ministry said.
“This is one of the largest ever attempts to attack Moscow with drones,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin added. Sobyanin said in an earlier post that no damage or casualties had been reported.
Drone attacks on Moscow are rare, with Russia saying in May it had downed a drone outside the capital, forcing restrictions to be imposed at two major airports in the city for under an hour.
Kyiv has repeatedly targeted oil and gas facilities in Russia since the conflict began in 2022, some hundreds of kilometres from its borders, in what it has called “fair” retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s southern Rostov region on Sunday, causing a large fire, the local governor said.
