Deadly Ukraine Drone Barrage Hammers Moscow, Kills 1, As War Comes Closer

In addition to Ukraine's Kursk offensive, which has resulted in Ukrainian forces occupying hundreds of miles of Russian territory, the increased drone attacks on the Russian capital are designed to bring the war closer to Moscow elites who until recently, have felt the war was far away and not a concern for them. 

Payback's a bitch. JL

Ann Simmons reports in the Wall Street Journal:

A wave of drones targeted Russia overnight, including Moscow, in one of the largest such attacks on Russia’s territory since the start of its war with Ukraine. At least one died and six people were hospitalized, after residential buildings in a Moscow suburb caught alight during the assault, which also forced the closure of three of the capital’s airports. The strikes were the latest in a series of increasingly large-scale attacks involving dozens of drones hitting military air bases, oil refineries and ammunition stores.

A wave of drones targeted Russia overnight, including Moscow, in one of the largest such attacks on Russia’s territory since the start of its war with Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had shot down 144 drones, half of them in the western border region of Bryansk and the rest across Moscow and the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have staged an incursion in recent weeks.

At least one woman died and six people were hospitalized, according to Russian authorities, after residential buildings in a Moscow suburb caught alight during the assault, which also forced the temporary closure of three of the capital’s airports. Ukraine didn’t immediately comment on the strikes Tuesday, the latest in a series of increasingly large-scale attacks that have involved dozens of drones hitting military air bases, oil refineries and ammunition stores.

The mass drone assault appeared to mark an escalation of a recent push by Kyiv to take the war deep inside Russia, including Moscow, where residents have been largely insulated from the effects of armed conflict, now in its third year. 

Last month, Ukrainian forces swept across the border into Russia’s Kursk region—the first foreign invasion of Russian territory since World War II. The incursion dealt a humiliating blow to President Vladimir Putin, putting his manpower-stretched military in a bind and forcing the evacuation of 130,000 civilians from more than 400 square miles of Russian territory.

A damaged residential building following a drone attack in Ramenskoye in the Moscow region. Photo: tatyana makeyeva/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A few days later, Kyiv fired more than 150 drones at oil refineries and power plants across much of Russia, in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said was part of a strategy to conclude the conflict by making the Russian public feel the war the same way Ukrainians do.

“We are working to ensure that as many Russian military facilities, logistics hubs, and critical components of their war economy as possible fall within the reach of our weapons,” Zelensky said earlier this month. 

Despite the recent Ukrainian salvos, which have punctured Putin’s aura of invincibility and rattled many Russians, the Kremlin leader has sought to portray a business-as-usual attitude. End-of-summer activities have continued largely as normal in the Russian capital. An increased level of repression and laws to crush all opposition to the war make it difficult to accurately gauge public sentiment about the conflict.

Attacks on Ukraine have continued unabated and Russia has ramped up its use of nighttime bombardments that often strike civilians. Alarms rang out across much of Ukraine overnight as Russia launched an attack involving a missile-and-drone attack. The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 38 of 48 targets, some of them over Kyiv.

Last week, a barrage of drones and missiles struck the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, killing seven people including a mother and her three daughters.

Ukraine’s interception rate of such missiles and explosive drones has declined as Russia has intensified attacks and Ukraine has run low on interceptors.

Faced with limitations on the use of long-range weapons provided by Western partners, Ukraine has been rapidly developing its own drone-and-missile capabilities. 

Zelensky has urged the U.S. to untie its hands and allow powerful American-made missiles, such as ATACMS, to be used on Russian territory. The U.S. has thus far resisted, fearing it would be perceived in Moscow as an escalation. 

Throughout the summer, Russia has been increasing its attacks on Ukrainian territory using ballistic missiles and Iranian-designed Shahed drones, causing large casualties among civilian populations.

A damaged multistory building following an attack in Ramenskoye. Photo: Associated Press

Video aired on Russian state television Tuesday showed flames bursting through the upper-floor windows of a multistory residential apartment building in Moscow’s Ramenskoye region, around 30 miles from the Kremlin.

A spokesman for Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said on the Telegram messaging app that Moscow’s Domodedovo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo airports had resumed operations after dozens of flights had been grounded.

“Night strikes on residential areas cannot be associated with military operations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday. “The Kyiv regime continues to demonstrate its true nature. These are enemies. We must continue the military operation in order to protect ourselves from such manifestations of such a regime.”

 

In Ukraine, opinion polls show that support for some kind of negotiations with Moscow has been creeping upward since Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year failed to retake significant territory—though a majority of Ukrainians still say they want to keep fighting to retake all Russian-occupied land. 

Putin last week said Russia was open to reviving talks to end the war, but only along lines that Kyiv has ruled out as impossible to agree to.

On Tuesday, Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council and until recently the country’s defense minister, said in an interview with Russian state television that Moscow ruled out imminent peace talks with Kyiv.

“Until we throw them out of our territory, we, naturally, will not conduct any negotiations with them,” Shoigu said.