MOSCOW: Air defenses thwarted a new attack on Moscow on Wednesday as Ukraine launched another wave of drone strikes on the Russian capital.
No one was hurt in Moscow but three people were killed in a separate drone attack on a village in Belgorodnear the Ukrainian border. The regional governor said one drone hit a sanatorium and another was shot down. Two people died at the scene and doctors were unable to save the life of a third person.
The attack on Moscow once again forced the capital’s airports to briefly suspend flights as a precaution. The Defense Ministry said air defense forces had shot down two drones over the Moscow region’s Mozhaisky and Khimki districts. A third drone was jammed, lost control and hit a high-rise building under construction in the Moscow City business district. Glass panes on three floors of the building were damaged.
The latest attack was the sixth on the Russian capital and the third on the business district, where some state institutions have been concentrated since May, when drones targeted the Kremlin itself.
A Russian military expert told Arab News the drone attacks were “an act of desperation due to the failures of the Ukrainian armed forces on the battlefield.”
“The widely advertised counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army has choked and Kiev needs to demonstrate at least something to its Western allies so that they continue to generously finance and arm the Ukrainian regime,” said Konstantin Sivkov, a retired colonel and vice-president of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences.
“Ukraine is increasingly resorting to terrorist methods of warfare, such as attacks by kamikaze drones on peaceful cities, not only in the depths of Russia, but also in those regions that Kiev considers occupied.”
Elsewhere, Ukraine destroyed a Russian S-400 anti-aircraft defense system on the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry published a video of a massive explosion with a huge column of smoke billowing into the sky. “This is a painful blow to the occupiers’ air defense system,” it said.
Pro-war Russian military bloggers said the attack highlighted flaws in the country’s defense capacities.“Again, the question arises of why Ukrainian boats come so close to the shores of Crimea,” said the influential Rybar Telegram channel, which has 1.2 million followers. “We need a systematic defeat of the entire Ukrainian fleet, and this requires changes in the organization of the Russian Navy.”
Another channel, Voenny Osvedomitel, said the attack raised “fair questions about the quality of air defense coverage in one of the most 'missile-prone' regions of Russia.”
