Ukraine launches major drone attack on Moscow
Ukraine is ramping up its drone warfare as Moscow recovers today from what is thought to be the largest aerial assault Kyiv has inflicted on the Russian capital since the war began two and a half years ago.
In the early hours of this morning, Russian air defences shot down eleven drones over Moscow and its surrounding areas, according to the country’s defence ministry. Sergey Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, insisted that Russian defences managed to “successfully repel all the attacks”, though he did not play down the scale of the ambush, labelling it “one of the largest attempts of all time to attack Moscow with drones.”
There have been no confirmed casualties or damage as a result of the attack. But it has caused disruption, with three of the Moscow’s airports – Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky – being forced to restrict flights for four hours overnight.
Ukrainian drone strikes have periodically targeted the Russian capital for over a year, the first of which came in May 2023, when eight drones were shot down over the city and an explosive object was filmed hitting the flagpole above the Kremlin. At the time, Putin claimed he had been the victim of an assassination attempt – something Zelensky denied.
The Russian capital wasn’t the only city targeted by Ukraine last night. Elsewhere in Russia, the ministry of defence said it had shot down 23 drones over the Bryansk region, six over Belgorod, three over Kaluga and two over the Kursk region.
As Alexander McDermott wrote recently in Reaction, new data last month indicated that, for the first time, Ukraine is actually launching more long-range drone attacks than Russia. In July, Russia sent 426 Shahed-type drones into Ukraine. Over the same period, Ukraine hit back with over 520 drones, many of which targeted Russian oil refineries and gas storage facilities.
At the end of last month, Kyiv conducted its longest-ever range strike on Russia’s Olenya air base, located more than 1,900 kilometers from the Ukrainian border in the Arctic on the Kola Peninsula. While Russia declined to comment on the attack, Ukraine’s intelligence unit claimed to have hit a strategic bomber.
Olenya airfield has been used by Russian forces to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine with cruise missiles, and Tu-95MS bombers from Olenya are suspected to have been used to bomb a children’s hospital in Kyiv earlier this summer. Hence why President Zelensky said of the Olenya drone strike: “Each destroyed Russian airbase, each destroyed Russian military aircraft — whether on the ground or in the air — means saving Ukrainian lives.”
Kyiv is not just relying on weapons supplied by the west to launch these strikes. In December, Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s Minister for Strategic Industries, stated his aim to produce 10,000 strike drones with ranges in the hundreds of kilometers in 2024. Which amounts to over 800 a month.
While Kyiv’s rationale for targeting Russia’s oil refineries or military airbases is fairly self-explanatory, drone attacks that target Moscow likely serve a slightly different purpose, one rather more grounded in psychological warfare.
They appear to be an attempt to bring home the reality of war to the Russian population, not just those living near the country’s western border, but even those going about their daily life in the bustling capital.
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