RUSSIAN AIR DEFENCES destroyed a drone as it approached Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said early this morning.

“Tonight, air defense forces destroyed a drone on approach to Moscow in the Istrinskii district,” Sobyanin wrote on Telegram.

“Preliminarily, there were no casualties or damage. Emergency services are working on the site,” he added.

The defence ministry said a second Ukrainian drone had been destroyed early this morning in the Shebekino district, part of the Belgorod region close to the border.

“An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack with a drone against sites on Russian territory has been prevented,” the ministry posted on Telegram.

Moscow was rarely targeted during the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine though attacks have mounted of late.

The capital and other Russian regions have been targeted by a barrage of Ukrainian drone attacks in recent days after Kyiv vowed earlier this summer to “return” the conflict to Russia.

In the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, authorities said three civilians were killed by Kyiv’s forces on Wednesday.

That same day, a drone crashed into a skyscraper in a Moscow business district and smashed a window, without causing any casualties, according to authorities.

It was the sixth consecutive night the Moscow region had been targeted by drone strikes.

- AFP 2023