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On Tuesday, Ukraine launched its largest drone attack to date on the Moscow Region, killing at least one woman, damaging multiple homes, and forcing the diversion of around 50 flights from Moscow's airports.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported the interception of 144 fixed-wing drones over Russian territory on the night of Sep. 10. According to the ministry, 20 drones were shot down over the Moscow Region, while 124 more were intercepted over seven other Russian regions: Bryansk (72), Kursk (14), Tula (13), Belgorod (8), Kaluga (7), Voronezh (5), Lipetsk (4), and Oryol (1).
According to the Telegram channel Mash, widely reported to be linked to Russia’s law enforcement agencies, Ukraine’s domestically-produced long-range Liutyi drones, capable of flying up to 1,000 kilometers (approx. 620 miles) and carrying up to 50 kilograms of explosives, were used in the attack on the Moscow Region.
At around 4:30 a.m. Moscow time, one of the drones crashed into a residential building in the town of Ramenskoye, sparking a fire on the 11th and 12th floors. A second drone exploded after crashing into another apartment building in the same town.
The Ramenskoye District, located approximately 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, has an official population of about 250,000 people.
The drone strike on Ramenskoye resulted in the first civilian fatality in the Moscow Region since Russia unleashed its full-scale war in Feb. 2022. A 46-year-old woman was killed, and 12 others were injured.
Three of Moscow’s four airports — Vnukovo, Zhukovsky, and Domodedovo — were temporarily closed for more than six hours in response to the attack. Close to 50 flights were diverted from the area and others were delayed for up to 13 hours, eyewitnesses in Moscow told The Insider. The Telegram channel VChK-OGPU also claimed that one of the drones crashed near an undisclosed Moscow airport.
Meanwhile, Kyiv reported that Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight using 46 Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones, of which 38 were intercepted and shot down.
With Russian forces reportedly making territorial gains in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv recently brought the conflict into Russian territory with an ongoing cross-border assault in the Kursk Region. The Ukrainian offensive has been accompanied by a series of escalating drone attacks deep within Russia.
Since the late spring of 2022, the full-scale war unleashed by Russia on Feb. 24 of that year has largely been a grueling artillery and drone battle fought along a heavily fortified 1,000 km (620 mile) front line in southern and eastern Ukraine, involving hundreds of thousands of troops.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have been focused on acquiring and developing new drones, employing them in creative ways, and finding methods to neutralize the enemy’s UAVs using a range of defenses — from shotguns to sophisticated electronic jamming technologies.
Both sides have also transformed off-the-shelf commercial drones into lethal weapons, increasing production to target military equipment, energy infrastructure, and airfields.