Putin halts flights over Moscow as drone strike rocks town near nuclear power plant

Ukraine has sent another barrage of drone attacks to Russia amid reports a nuclear power plant may have been hit.

The number of drone strikes hitting Russian territory during the Russia-Ukraine war has now topped 500 – and it appears multiple regions were targeted.

Two UAVs hit an administrative and residential building in Kurchatov, in the Kursk region which is also home to a nuclear plant, Governor Roman Starovoyt said.

‘Investigators are on the scene to assess the extent of the damage,’ he said, without specifying if any damage was done to the nuclear plant.

A video showed a large aerial explosion in the moonlight over Pskov in northern Russia, scene of a devastating attack earlier this week when two Il-76 transport planes were destroyed, and another pair badly damaged.

New satellite images show the devastation on the military airbase, a key hub of Russian paratroopers.

Moscow suffered new chaos with more airport closures amid claims a drone was shot down over suburb Lyubertsy.

Smoke was seen rising in the vicinity and major airports halted flights for more than two hours.

Kurchatov was hit by drone strikes (Picture: Getty Images/imageBROKER RF)

More drone strikes were reported this morning (Picture: Twitter/visegrad24)

A drone was seen flying over Moscow

‘Today, air defence forces near Lyubertsy thwarted another attempt to fly a drone to Moscow,’ said the city’s mayor Sergey Sobyanin.

The latest drone strikes confirm Ukraine’s enhanced ability to hit Russia.

Pskov is almost 500 miles from the nearest Ukrainian territory and it was thought drones are being released by anti-war groups colluding with Ukrainian secret services and operating in Putin’s country.

But Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that Ukraine now had the ability to mount long range strikes inside Russia.

Ukraine also revealed footage of an experiment showing the explosive capability of its newly-used cardboard drones.

The drones were deployed for an earlier attack on Kursk at Khalino military airfield and may have been used in other strikes as Kyiv steps up its targeting of Russian territory.

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A Ukrainian armed forces spokesman said: ‘According to our information, such drones are invisible to enemy radars.

‘As the test showed, after the explosion, the striking elements cover a rather large area, sufficient to damage even a large aircraft.’

Kyiv claims that in Kursk 16 of its drones damaged four Su-30 fighter jets, one MiG-29 fighter jet, two Pantsir-S1 close-range air defence systems and a radar linked to a long-range S-300 surface-to-air missile system.

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