Ukraine hits back after huge Russian drone strike by targeting three airports overnight

Wires alight close to the centre of Moscow earlier this morning (Picture: social media/e2w)

Russia has come under intense kamikaze drone attack this weekend in the heaviest bombardment by Ukraine for months.

Three of Moscow’s international airports – Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky – were forced to close, with flights suspended or cancelled.

Russia was forced to shoot down 11 drones overnight on Saturday, and another nine early on Sunday morning.

It comes as Ukraine retaliates against Russian shelling on Saturday.

Moscow’s Putin-loyal mayor complained of a ‘mass attack’ on the Russian capital.

Five drones were reportedly shot down in Naro-Fominsk, Odintsovo, Ramensky and Podolsk urban districts on the outskirts of Moscow.

A drone was pictured during the attack on Tula (Picture: social media/e2w)

In three cases there was damage to buildings on the ground – but it was not immediately clear if any of the drones had hit strategic targets.

‌Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the main target was Moscow.

‘A mass drone attack was attempted overnight,’ he said.

Elsewhere power was cut in the Russian-occupied Donetsk People’s Republic after an apparent Ukrainian strike on the region’s power grid.

In Tula, a city around 130 miles south of Moscow, one drone hit a residential building as it fell to the ground, causing an explosion which left three people needing medical help.

Later in the morning a new drone swarm was reported there, with ‘loud explosions’ reported over the city amid unconfirmed reports of two kamikaze drones being shot down.

More drones were also downed in the Kaluga, Bryansk and Smolensk regions.

One drone hit a residential building in Tula as it was shot down (Picture: social media/e2w)

Elsewhere, power was cut in Russian-occupied Donetsk after an apparent Ukrainian strike on the region’s power grid.

Putin-appointed occupation leader Denis Pushilin said: ‘At night, the enemy tried to damage the region’s energy system.

‘Unfortunately, due to the massiveness of the attacks, not everything was shot down.’

Parts of Donetsk city and Makeevka plus almost all of Mariupol were without power.

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It came a day after the heaviest strikes of Kyiv by Putin kamikaze drones since the start of the war, when 71 out of 75 Iranian-made Shahed UAVs were downed by Ukrainian air defences.

Serhiy Popko, head of the capital city’s administration, called it ‘the most massive air attack by drones on Kyiv’.

‘Our soldiers shot down most of the drones. Unfortunately, not all,’ said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

‘But we continue to work to strengthen our air defence and shoot down more.’

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