Moscow sees one of Ukraine's largest drone attacks as fighting rages in Kursk and eastern Ukraine

MOSCOW — Moscow came under one of the largest attacks by Ukrainian drones since the start of fighting in 2022, Russian authorities reported Wednesday, saying they destroyed all of those headed toward the country’s capital.

The attacks came as Ukrainian forces continue to push into Russia’s western Kursk region. In the past week, they have also struck three bridges, several airfields and an oil depot in a sign they are not letting up on their attacks.

Late Wednesday, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk, which borders both Kursk and Ukraine, said Russian forces turned back a Ukrainian attempt to enter that region.

Governor Alexander Bogomaz identified the Ukrainian forces as a “sabotage and reconnaissance group” but did not specify if they were part of Ukraine’s military. He said on the Telegram channel that the attempted incursion was in the area of Klimovo, about 125 miles west of the section of Kursk held by Ukrainian forces.

Russian officials say 11 drones targeted Moscow, the largest drone attack ever launched on the capital. In the latest salvo of this war, battles are increasingly being fought with drones.
@ErinNBCNews spoke with one young Ukrainian who piloted these devices until recently. pic.twitter.com/lKxfUai93k

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) August 21, 2024

“This was one of the biggest attempts of all time to attack Moscow using drones,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram. Strong defenses around the Russian capital made it possible to shoot down all the drones before they could hit their intended targets, he said.

Russia said it downed 45 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 11 over the Moscow region. There was no independent information to verify those figures. Some Russian social media channels shared videos of drones apparently being destroyed by air defense systems, which then set off car alarms.

Ukrainian drone strikes have brought the fight far from the front line into the heart of Russia, targeting Moscow and Russia’s second city St. Petersburg, as well as an airport in western Russia, according to Russian officials.

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals to slow down the Kremlin’s assault.

A fire at an oil depot targeted by Ukraine burned for the fourth day Wednesday in Rostov, a region in southwestern Russia that borders Ukraine. Priests from the Russian Orthodox Church held prayers for injured firefighters as dark plumes of smoke rose from the depot in Proletarsk, according to a photo shared on social media by the Volgodonsk diocese.

Ukraine’s daring land incursion into Russia has raised morale in Ukraine with its surprising success and changed the dynamic of the fighting. But it is also risky — Ukrainian forces were already badly stretched, with fighting underway along a stretch of over 600 miles. The gains in Kursk come as Ukraine continues to lose ground in its eastern industrial region of Donbas.

The Russian state news agency Tass reported that 31 people had died since Ukraine’sincursion started Aug. 6, figures that are impossible to verify. It said 143 people were injured, of whom 79 were hospitalized, including four children.

A Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive device on a car in the Bolshesoldatsky area of Kursk, slightly northeast of the town of Sudzha, the acting governor Alexei Smirnov said. One woman was killed and two others were hospitalized, he said.

Russia’s Central Electoral Commission announced that local elections in six districts and one city of the Kursk region scheduled for Sept. 8 will be postponed and rescheduled when voters’ safety can be guaranteed.

Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Ukraine’s attack on Kursk has ended “any possibility” of peace negotiations.

“Who will negotiate with them after this, after the atrocities, the terror that they are committing against peaceful residents, the civilian population, civilian infrastructure and peaceful facilities,” she told reporters Wednesday in Moscow.

Ukraine said it was respecting the Geneva Conventions, the international humanitarian rules of war. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the Ukrainian military established an office in the Kursk region to provide humanitarian and medical aid to the local population. More than 90% of Russian civilians who stayed in Kursk territory currently controlled by Ukraine are age 60 and older, he said.

“We have no right to leave them there to die,” Klymenko said, according to the Ukrinform national news agency.

Ukraine’s attacks on three bridges over the Seym River in Kursk could potentially trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and Ukraine’s border. Already they appear to be slowing down Russia’s response to the Kursk incursion.

Ukrainian forces seem to be striking Russian pontoon bridges and pontoon engineering equipment over the Seym in an area west of the Ukrainian advance point, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Tuesday.

Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed Wednesday by The Associated Press show a significant fire on the Seym, near the village of Krasnooktyabrskoe.

The blaze appeared on the northern bank of the river on Tuesday, with another fire seemingly in the village itself. Such fires are common after strikes and often signify where ongoing front-line combat is taking place.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had thwarted attack attempts by Ukrainian assault groups in the Kursk region, according to a report from Tass. Ukraine’s armed forces saw more than 45 soldiers killed or wounded over the past 24 hours, and two were captured while attempting to attack the Kursk region, Tass said. There was no independent confirmation of those numbers and no comment from the Ukrainian side.

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In other developments:

— A Russian prosecutor’s office has filed a request at the military court in Rostov-on-Don asking for sentences of 16 to 24 years in prison for 23 Ukrainian prisoners of war. They’re accused of terrorism and actions aimed at violent seizure of power. All served in the Ukrainian Azov battalion, including nine women who mostly served as cooks.

— An AP analysis of drone strike data by Ukraine’s armed forces shows that missiles and drones have consistently been launched from Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the aim of the Kursk operation was to create a “buffer zone” to better protect Ukraine from Russian attacks.