At least three people were killed in an unprecedented Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow and the surrounding region, authorities said Tuesday, with Russia's Defense Ministry claiming that it downed 337 unmanned aircraft overnight.
"The largest ever attack by enemy drones on Moscow has been repelled," Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote on Telegram early Tuesday. "Seventy-four combat drones were shot down on their way to Moscow, with hundreds more intercepted at various points."
Russia's military shot down 91 drones in the areas surrounding Moscow, the Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding it downed another 126 over the Kursk region bordering Ukraine.
At least two people were killed and nine others wounded in the Moscow region, according to Governor Andrei Vorobyov, who added that drone debris damaged at least seven units of an apartment building in suburbs southeast of the Russian capital.
"Unfortunately, a 50-year-old man passed away at Vidnoye hospital. Doctors fought for his life until the very end, restarting his heart four times," Vorobyov wrote on Telegram after earlier saying that a 38-year-old man was killed in a parking lot outside a meat packing plant.
Local authorities later said that a third man died at the hospital.
The business newspaper Kommersant, describing the overnight attack on Moscow as the "largest" since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reported that only one drone appeared to have reached the Russian capital, while the rest crashed or were downed in the Moscow region.
Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said later on Tuesday that it had launched an investigation into the drone strikes, treating them as an act of terrorism.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state-run news agency TASS that President Vladimir Putin had been briefed about the attacks.
Moscow airports lifted air restrictions around 9:15 a.m. local time after initially prohibiting flights to and from their runways, Interfax reported. Russian Railways said falling drone debris caused damage at Domodedovo train station south of Moscow, which led to disruptions in service.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the overnight attack came as OSCE Secretary General Feridun H. Sinirlioglu was visiting Moscow.
"The Kyiv regime once again sent drones toward the city," Zakharova wrote on Telegram. "The head of an organization that Zelensky’s sponsors have reduced to mere rhetoric, stripping it of its original purpose — ensuring security and cooperation in Europe."
"This is yet another signal to the international community — to the so-called collective West, which in reality is anything but united — that the monster they nurtured, fed, armed and showered with money is now completely out of control," she added.
Ukrainian authorities said later on Tuesday that the drone attack should pressure Putin to accept an air ceasefire proposed by Kyiv.
"The largest drone attack in history was carried out on Moscow and the Moscow region," Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Kovalenko said. "This is an additional signal to Putin that he should also be interested in a ceasefire in the air."
Tuesday's attack on the Russian capital, hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border, comes ahead of a meeting later in the day between top U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.
Ukraine is set to present the United States with a plan for a partial ceasefire with Russia, hoping to restore support from its key ally, which, under U.S. President Donald Trump, has demanded concessions from both sides to end the three-year war.
The sit-down in Saudi Arabia will be the first senior-level talks between the two countries since last month's disastrous White House meeting. At that meeting, Vice President J.D. Vance berated Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky for allegedly not showing enough gratitude to the United States, while Trump told Zelensky that he was "playing with WWIII."
Since Trump's dressing down of Zelensky, Washington has suspended military aid to Ukraine, as well as intelligence sharing and access to satellite imagery, in a bid to force it to the negotiating table.
AFP contributed reporting.
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