Russia warns of ‘tough retaliatory measures’ to Ukraine drone attacks
- Russia said it thwarted a ‘terrorist attack’ on Moscow, shot down 11 drones in Crimea
- It was the latest in a series of drone attacks that Russian officials blamed on Ukraine
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Russia said on Monday that drone attacks in central Moscow and annexed Crimea could warrant a harsh response, after Ukraine claimed an attack on the capital.
“We regard what happened as yet another use of terrorist methods and intimidation of the civilian population by the military and political leadership of Ukraine,” Russia’s foreign ministry said.
“The Russian Federation reserves the right to take tough retaliatory measures,” it added.
The ministry said the “West’s focus on further aggravating the situation” in Ukraine was behind Kyiv’s “brazen actions”.
Russian officials said earlier that Ukrainian drones hit two buildings in Moscow and an ammunition depot in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.
A Ukrainian defence source told Agence France-Presse the attack on Moscow was a “special operation” carried out by Kyiv’s military intelligence.
The attack on Moscow, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) from Ukraine, comes after Kyiv vowed to retaliate for a Russian missile strike on the city of Odesa a day earlier.
The attack killed two people and damaged a historic cathedral in the Unesco-protected city on the Black Sea.
Agence France-Presse reporters at the scene of the strike near the ministry on Komsomolsky Prospekt saw a two-storey building with a damaged roof behind a police cordon.
“I wasn’t asleep. It was 3:39am. The house really shook,” Vladimir, a 70-year-old local resident, said about the moment of impact.
“It is scandalous that a Ukrainian drone almost flew into the defence ministry,” said Vladimir, who declined to give his last name, as he took pictures at the scene.
Polina, a 35-year-old manager out walking her dog, said her husband and child were woken by “a very loud noise right next to our house”.
In Crimea, Moscow-installed governor Sergei Aksyonov said Russian forces shot down 11 Ukrainian drones.
He said an ammunition depot was “hit” and a private house “damaged”, without providing further details.
Aksyonov said villages near the depot were being evacuated.
Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, has been targeted by Kyiv throughout Moscow’s Ukraine offensive but has come under more intense, increased attacks in recent weeks.
Kyiv has repeatedly said it plans to take back Crimea.
Meanwhile in southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials reported a four-hour Russian drone attack on port infrastructure on the Danube River.
“As a result of the strikes, a grain hangar was destroyed, tanks for storing other types of cargo were damaged,” Ukraine’s southern military command said on Telegram.
The Danube delta region, which spans across Romania and Ukraine, is being used as an export route for Ukrainian grain.
Russia last week pulled out of a key deal which had allowed the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.
Since then Kyiv has accused Russia of targeting grain supplies and infrastructure vital to grain exports.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down three of the drones used in Monday’s attack.
“According to initial reports, about four workers of the port were injured, but the information is still being clarified,” it said.
Russia’s defence ministry branded the Moscow drone attack a “terrorist act”.
“Two Ukrainian drones were suppressed and crashed. There are no casualties,” it said.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone strikes occurred at around 4am local time.
“There was no serious damage,” he said.
The RIA Novosti news agency posted a video of the business centre, with some damage visible to the top of the tall building.
The road around it was closed.
Moscow and its environs lie around 500km (310 miles) from the Ukrainian border but have been hit by several drone attacks this year, with one even hitting the Kremlin in May.
After Russian strikes on Odesa, President Volodymyr Zelensky had vowed retaliation on Sunday.
“They will definitely feel this,” he said.
“We cannot allow people around the world to get used to terrorist attacks,” Zelensky added.
“The target of all these missiles is not just cities, villages or people. Their target is humanity and the foundations of our entire European culture.”
A strike on the city on Sunday killed two people and severely damaged a historic cathedral.
Clergymen rescued icons from rubble inside the badly damaged Transfiguration Cathedral, which was demolished under Stalin in 1936 and rebuilt in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Ukrainian government condemned the cathedral strike as a “war crime”, saying it had been “destroyed twice: by Stalin and Putin”.
