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Drone attack targets Moscow, office tower struck / Photo: Alexander NEMENOV - AFP
Drone attack targets Moscow, office tower struck
A Ukrainian drone downed by Russia on Tuesday struck a Moscow office tower that was also hit over the weekend, as multiple other drones were downed, Russian officials said.
"Several drones were shot down by air defence 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 Telegram.
"There is no information on casualties," he said, 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 defence 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 defence systems over the territory of the Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts of 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.
Moscow and its environs, located about 500 kilometres (310 miles) from the Ukrainian border, had rarely been targeted during the conflict in Ukraine until several drone attacks this year.
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.
- 'War returning to Russia' -
On Monday, a missile strike on a residential building killed six and wounded dozens in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvyi Rig.
A day earlier, Zelensky had warned that war was coming to Russia.
"Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia -- to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process," Zelensky said Sunday.
The Kremlin on Monday called the recent strikes on the capital an "act of desperation" by Ukraine following setbacks on the battlefield.
Ukraine began its long-awaited counteroffensive in June but has made modest advances in the face of stiff resistance from Russian forces on the frontline.
D.Ch. Nadeau--SMC
