Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Ukrainian drones attacked the city on the night of July 30. “The facades on two City office towers were slightly damaged. There are no casualties,” Sobyanin wrote on his Telegram channel.
Emergency services told TASS that a security guard was injured in the Oko-2 tower as a result of a “clap” (what Russian authorities call explosions - Meduza’s note). In the building itself, windows from the first to the fourth floor were broken. Several windows on the fifth and sixth floors of one of the high-rise buildings in the “IQ-quarter” were blown out. Traffic on Testovskaya Street was blocked in the area of the drone attack in Moscow City, the Moscow Department of Transportation said. Passers-by found documents on the street, which were presumably blown out of the buildings where the offices of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media are located.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that three drones were involved in the attack on Moscow. Air defense forces destroyed one of the drones in the air over the territory of the Odintsovo district of Moscow Region. “Two more drones were suppressed by electronic warfare and, having lost control, crashed into a complex of non-residential buildings of Moscow City,” the ministry said.
Amid the incident, Moscow’s Vnukovo airport was closed for departures and arrivals. The airport claimed the restrictions were introduced “for technical reasons,” but they were loosened at five in the morning, and the airport is working normally now. Flights were banned in Moscow and Moscow region air space.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed of attack on the Moscow region, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said TASS at around 11 am. At the time, Putin was attending a naval parade in St. Petersburg.
The Ukrainian president’s office has not commented on the Russian side’s statements at the time of publication. Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, commented, “there’s always something flying in Russia, and in Moscow in particular.” “There are those whom the war ‘does not concern’ — it already does. There are already certain sentiments in Russia — something is flying in, and loudly… So it is no longer necessary to talk about Russian peace in the interior. They got what they wanted,” Ignat stated.
Overnight on July 30, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian troops launched 25 drones at facilities in Crimea. According to the ministry, air defense destroyed 16 Ukrainian drones, while another nine were suppressed by electronic warfare, they fell in the Black Sea near Cape Tarkhankut. According to the Russian side, there were no casualties or damage.
Moscow has been attacked by drones numerous during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On the night of May 3, 2023, two drones attacked the dome of the Senate Palace in the Kremlin. Russian authorities called what happened a “terrorist attack” and an attempt on President Vladimir Putin (he was in another residence at the time of the attack). On the morning of May 30, three drones struck residential buildings. On the night of July 24, two drones hit two non-residential buildings.