Ukraine strikes Moscow in biggest drone attack on Russia's capital

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Mar 11, 2025 4:56 AM EDT | Last Updated: 33 minutes ago

Ukraine launched its biggest drone onslaught connected the Russian superior connected Tuesday with astatine slightest 91 drones targeting Moscow, sidesplitting astatine slightest 1 person, sparking fires, closing airports and forcing dozens of flights to beryllium diverted, Russian officials said.

A full of 337 Ukrainian drones were downed implicit Russia, including 91 implicit the Moscow portion and 126 implicit the Kursk region, wherever Ukrainian forces person been pulling back, the defence ministry said.

The monolithic dawn drone onslaught unfurled conscionable arsenic a squad of Ukrainian officials hole to conscionable a U.S. squad successful Saudi Arabia to question grounds for imaginable bid talks successful the three-year-old war, and arsenic Russian forces effort to encircle thousands of Ukrainian soldiers successful the occidental Russian portion of Kursk.

As unreserved hr built, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said aerial defences were inactive repelling attacks connected the city, which on with the surrounding portion has a colonisation of astatine slightest 21 cardinal and is 1 of the biggest metropolitan areas successful Europe.

"The astir monolithic onslaught of force UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) connected Moscow has been repelled," Sobyanin said successful a station connected Telegram.

Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said astatine slightest 2 radical were killed and 3 injured, and helium posted a representation of a wrecked flat with its windows blown out.

Vorobyov said that immoderate residents were forced to evacuate a multi-story gathering successful the Ramenskoye territory of the Moscow region, astir 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin.

There was nary motion of panic successful Moscow, commuters went to enactment arsenic mean successful cardinal Moscow.

Russia's aviation watchdog said flights were suspended astatine each 4 of Moscow's airports to guarantee aerial information aft the attacks. Two different airports, successful the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions, some eastbound of Moscow, were besides closed.

Though U.S. President Donald Trump says helium wants to present bid successful Ukraine, the warfare is heating up connected the battlefield with a large Russian outpouring violative successful Kursk and a bid of Ukrainian drone attacks heavy into Russia.

Russia has developed a myriad of physics "umbrellas" implicit Moscow and implicit cardinal installations, with further precocious interior layers implicit strategical buildings, and a analyzable web of aerial defences to sprout down the drones earlier they scope the Kremlin successful the bosom of the capital.

Kyiv, itself the people of repeated wide drone strikes from Russian forces, has tried to onslaught backmost against its vastly larger eastbound neighbour with repeated drone strikes against lipid refineries, airfields and adjacent Russian strategical early-warning radar stations.

WATCH | Ukrainian soldiers, designers talk astir processing much high-tech onslaught drones:

The war, the biggest successful Europe since the Second World War, has combined grinding First World War-style attrition trench and artillery warfare with the large innovation of drones.

Moscow and Kyiv person some sought to bargain and make caller drones, deploy them successful innovative ways, and question caller ways to destruct them — from utilizing farmers' shotguns to precocious physics jamming systems.

Both sides person turned inexpensive commercialized drones into deadly weapons portion ramping up their ain production.

Soldiers connected some sides person reported a visceral fearfulness of drones — and some sides person utilized macabre video footage of fatal drone strikes successful their propaganda, with soldiers shown being blown isolated successful toilets oregon moving from burning vehicles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sought to insulate Moscow from the rigours of the war, has called Ukrainian drone attacks that people civilian infrastructure specified arsenic atomic powerfulness plants "terrorism" and has vowed a response.

Moscow, by acold Russia's richest city, has boomed during the war, buoyed by the biggest defence spending splurge since the Cold War.