Kyiv’s air defenses thwarted an overnight Russian drone attack, just hours after the Kremlin warned of “tough retaliatory measures” in response to a Ukrainian attack on Moscow on Monday.
Air raid sirens sounded in the Ukrainian capital just before 2 a.m. with the alert lasting for three hours but none of the drones reached the city.
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“Air defense forces and means detected in a timely manner and destroyed all air targets as they approached Kyiv,” Sergiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, said on Telegram.
He added: “According to the information at this moment, there were no victims or destruction in the capital.”
The attempted strike on Kyiv came a day after Moscow was rocked by two explosions after a drone crashed in Komsomolsky Prospekt, near the defense ministry, while another hit a business center on Likhacheva Street near one of the city’s main ring roads.
Ukraine has said the attack was a "special operation" carried out by Kyiv’s forces.
On Monday evening, Russia said the drone attacks in central Moscow could warrant a harsh response: “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.
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The ministry said the “West's focus on further aggravating the situation” in Ukraine was behind Kyiv's “brazen actions.”
Andriy Yusov, spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR), told Kyiv Post the strikes exposed Moscow’s weak air defenses, something Ukraine intends to take advantage of.
“The strikes on the key facilities of Russia’s security sector located in Moscow testify to the fact that the Putin regime is unable to fully control the sky even for the protection of the most important facilities,” he said.
Referring to “cotton” – a Ukrainian wordplay referring to explosions – in Moscow, he added: “Obviously, this situation will continue and increase in scale.”
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