An office tower in Moscow was struck by a downed drone on Tuesday, Russian officials said, in the second such instance in just three days.
“Several drones were shot down by air defense systems while trying to fly to Moscow. One [drone] flew into the same tower in [Moscow] City as last time. The facade on the 21st floor was damaged,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app.
“There is no information on casualties,” he noted, adding that emergency services were on the scene.
On Sunday, Russia said it had downed Ukrainian drones targeting the capital in an attack that damaged two office towers in Moscow-City, a commercial development.
Russia’s Defense Ministry blamed Tuesday’s attack on Ukraine, saying that multiple facilities in the Moscow region had been targeted.
“Two Ukrainian [unmanned aerial vehicles] were destroyed by air defense systems over the territory of the Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts of the Moscow region,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Another drone was suppressed by electronic warfare and, having lost control, crashed on the territory of the Moscow-City non-residential building complex.”
Shortly after the drone attack, Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport was briefly closed, TASS state news agency reported.
“Vnukovo was temporarily closed for arrivals and departures, the planes are redirected to other airports,” emergency services said, according to TASS, which later reported that it had resumed normal operations.
The same airport was briefly closed after Sunday’s attack, and earlier this month, a volley of drone attacks disrupted air traffic at Vnukovo, to the city’s southwest.
Tuesday’s attack is the latest in a series of drone assaults — including on the Kremlin and Russian towns near the border with Ukraine — that Moscow has blamed on Kyiv.
