Breaking: Moscow Hit with Drone Attack for First Time Since Invading Ukraine

- May 30, 2023

Multiple drones struck residential areas of Moscow, including districts known to house the city’s political and business elites, on Tuesday. The offensive marked the first time Moscow had been targeted by a large-scale drone attack since Russia first invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The Russian Ministry of Defense blamed Ukraine’s political leadership for the “terrorist attack.”

“It is, of course, obvious that this is an attack by the Kyiv regime,” a Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told the press. “And this must be absolutely clearly understood.”

However, Ukrainian political leaders have objected to the accusation and insist that the state was not involved in the attack.

“Regarding the attacks: of course we are pleased to watch and predict an increase in the number of attacks. But of course we have nothing directly to do with this,” Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on the Breakfast Show Youtube responding to Russian accusations.

Russian air defense forces destroyed at least eight drones on Tuesday, which reportedly prevented any serious casualties.

“This morning, the Kyiv regime launched a terrorist drone attack on targets in the city of Moscow," the Russian Defense Ministry said in an official statement following the attack. “Three of them were suppressed by electronic warfare, lost control and deviated from their intended targets. Another five drones were shot down by the Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile system in the Moscow region.”

The novelty of the strike on Moscow has led Russian legislators to demand the government take new precautions to protect city residents.

“The sabotage and terrorist attacks of Ukraine will only increase,” Alexander Khinshtein, a parliamentarian from the ruling United Russia party, said after the attack. “It is necessary to radically strengthen defense and security measures, especially in terms of countering drones. This includes finally passing the necessary laws.”

The rhetorical back-and-forth resembles an earlier incident when a drone struck the Kremlin in early May. The attack led Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, to argue that it was an internal Russian operation that would serve as a pretext to escalate the war.

"Russia is clearly preparing a large-scale terrorist attack," Podolyak wrote on Twitter following videos of the Kremlin explosion surfaced.

The Kremlin was literally on fire. Russia calls it an assassination attempt, though Putin was not there at the time. https://t.co/4HkYFnJh81 pic.twitter.com/A3DDotaiDc

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) May 3, 2023

"Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation," he asserted. "What for? This does not solve any military issue. But it gives [Russia] grounds to justify its attacks on civilians." Podolyak wrote that he believes the attack indicates "the guerrilla activities of local resistance forces."

The Ukrainian counter-attack on Tuesday comes after Kyiv, the nation’s capital, experienced persistent missile and drone strikes over the previous 24 hours, leaving one dead and three injured.