“Last night, during an attempt to reach Moscow, air defense forces destroyed a drone,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said early Friday, August 18. “The carcass of the drone fell back into the area of ??the Exhibition Center, and did not cause any significant damage to the building,” said the city councilor, adding that the capital’s emergency services were on the scene. and that, according to initial information, no casualties had been identified.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the attack was carried out by kyiv at 4 a.m. local time (01 a.m. GMT) and targeted “objects located in Moscow and the Moscow region”. “A partial collapse of the outer wall was found on one of the pavilions of the Exhibition Center,” Russian state-run news agency Tass reported, citing emergency services. According to the Tass agency, the airspace near Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport was closed and departures and arrivals there were delayed.
Drone attacks inside Russian territory have been increasing for several weeks, most often without causing damage or casualties, and targeting the Russian capital in particular. The Russian army announced on August 11 that it had destroyed a Ukrainian drone in a forest area west of Moscow.
At the end of July and the beginning of August, devices had been destroyed above the business district of Moscow, in the west of the Russian capital, causing slight damage to the facade of two towers. In May, two drones were shot down over the Kremlin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed in late July that “war is coming to Russian territory”.
