Russia downs 34 drones in biggest Ukrainian attack on Moscow

The attack forced the temporary closure of three Moscow airports and set two homes in a village on fire, Russian officials said.

Rescuers work to extinguish a fire in a house following a drone attack in the village of Stanovoye, Moscow region, on November 10. Picture: AFP

Russia downed 34 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow on Sunday, the defence ministry said, in the largest attack on the capital since Russia began its offensive in Ukraine in 2022.

The attack, which forced the temporary closure of three Moscow airports, injured a 52-year-old woman and set two homes on fire in the village of Stanovoye in the Moscow region, officials said.

While the Ukrainian capital Kyiv is regularly targeted by massive Russian drone and missile strikes, attacks on Moscow are much less frequent.

The defence ministry said Russia’s air defence had downed a total of 70 Ukrainian drones between 4am GMT and 7am GMT (3pm-6pm Sunday AEDT) over six regions.

It said 34 were downed over the Moscow region and the rest over Bryansk, Orlov, Kaluga, Tula and Kursk.

In the Moscow region, local officials said the drones were downed in the Ramenskoye, Kolomna and Domodedovo districts.

A video published online by Russian media showed a house on fire, apparently in the Ramenskoye district.

Rescuers work at the site of a drone attack in the village of Stanovoye, Moscow region, on November 10. Picture: AFP

In the previous largest drone attack on or near Moscow in September, a woman was killed in Ramenskoye — the first time someone has been killed in a Ukrainian attack near the capital since the start of the conflict.

In May 2023, two drones were destroyed near the Kremlin and in the same year there were several drone attacks on the Moscow City business district.

Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov on Sunday said the drone attack had been “massive”.

He said the injured woman had been hospitalised with “burns to her face, neck and hands”.

Russia’s defence ministry said earlier it had downed a total of 23 Ukrainian drones over the Bryansk, Rostov, Belgorod and Kursk regions, which all border Ukraine and where drone strikes are more frequent.

Andrei Klychkov, the governor of Orlov region, which is closer to Moscow, said air defence had shot down a total of 10 drones over his region on Sunday.

Klychkov said there had been no casualties.

Ukraine has said the attacks, which often target energy production sites, are a response to Russian bombings on its territory since fighting began in February 2022.

Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities in the night between Thursday and Friday last week killed at least one person and wounded more than three dozen more.

The air force said Moscow had launched five missiles, 92 drones as well as glide bombs across Ukraine overnight. Its units downed four missiles and 62 drones, the air force said in a statement.

Russian troops recently suffered their worst month for casualties since the country’s war with Ukraine began almost three years ago, the head of Britain’s armed forces said on Sunday.

An average of around 1500 Russian solders were killed or injured per day in October, UK Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin told the BBC.

Russia does not reveal the number of its war dead, but Radakin said last month’s toll was the heaviest since Moscow launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

“Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded — the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of (President Vladimir) Putin’s ambition,” he added.

The armed forces chief acknowledged that Russia was territorial making gains, but said the losses were “for tiny increments of land”.

He said the Russian government was spending more than 40 per cent of public expenditure on defence and security, putting “an enormous strain” on the state.

The UK has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers in its fight against Russian aggression, providing Kyiv with billions of pounds in military aid, as well as weapons and troop training.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has reiterated Britain’s “ironclad” support for Ukraine, after Donald Trump’s US presidential election win raised concerns about western countries’ future commitment to backing Kyiv’s war effort.

Radakin repeated that the UK would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes”. “That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for (Ukrainian) President (Volodymyr) Zelensky,” he said.

The Russian defence ministry said Sunday that its forces had captured a new village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region where the army has been making advances in recent weeks.

“Units of the Centre armed group have liberated the town of Voltchenka,” the ministry said, using the Russian spelling of the Ukraine village Vovchenko, around 5km from the industrial city of Kurakhove.