Ukraine Launches Largest Drone Attack Yet on Moscow

After already having surprised Russia and the world by invading Russian territory on August 6 for the first time since the war started by Russia by its invading Ukraine in February 2022, the attacks yesterday were far more ambitious in many ways than anything Ukraine has attempted against Russia so far.

They were not the first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) assaults carried out by Kyiv’s forces on Russian soil since the war began. Those have been happening for some months now, thanks to supplies provided by the United States and multiple European nations in the ongoing support of a war which has already continued far longer than most had projected.

Those previous drone airstrikes were most often highly tactical in nature. They targeted military bases which had been used to send out missiles, fighter jets, munitions storehouses, and the Russian Federation’s own drone fleets. They also successfully took out multiple oil and gas storage and refining facilities deep within Russia.

In July, Ukraine military forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that since they began drone strikes inside Russian territory their drones had been launched against “military logistics” facilities located on “about 200 critical infrastructure sites”. One of the most recent of these took place last weekend in Proletarsk, a Russian town in Rostov oblast, where Russia has a major oil storage facility. This time the drones Ukraine sent in reached their target. The enormous fires lit after these drones struck are still burning now five days afterwards.

Most of those were on targets a significant distance away from Moscow, Russia’s capital city. The main exception to that happened in May 2023, when at least eight Ukrainian drones made their way into the skies over Moscow. Russia claims to have shot down the entire volley and Ukraine did not challenge that.

President Vladimir Putin said at the time the drones shot over Moscow that time were an attempt to frighten the population and make them question Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

The UAV attacks Ukraine carried out on August 21 over Russian territory and into Moscow were on a much more intense level than any of those earlier attacks.

According to a report from the Defense Ministry of Russia, this newest Ukrainian aerial surge involved at least 45 separate drones. The Ministry claims it shot down all 45 of them. It said its anti-missile interceptors blew up 11 so-called “kamikaze” drones which if not taken down would have struck central Moscow. Russian defenses reportedly took out an unspecified smaller number which were heading near Domodedovo International Airport, in Podolsk, a city an alarmingly close 24 miles to Moscow.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin personally confirmed the drone attack attempts on Podosk.

The Defense Ministry said another 23 drones were intercepted in the Bryansk border region, plus another half dozen in the skies over Belgorod. Three were destroyed over Kaluga, plus two in Kursk, near where over 1,000 Ukrainian troops crossed the borders into Russian territory as part of that country’s August 6 incursion and pushback of the Russian military.

Other drones were blasted out of the skies in the northern part of Murmansk. Located some 925 miles (1,500 kilometers) from Moscow, this target region is where Russia houses multiple of its tactical bomber aircraft fleet.

After the drones began climbing across Russian skies and the first of them were destroyed, Russia temporarily halted air service at all three of its major airports. Besides Podolsk’s Domodedovo airport, which was already identified as being under attack, Russian aviation authorities also suspended flights into and out of Vnukovo and Zhukovsky airfields. Vnokovo is located 17 miles southwest of Moscow’s urban center. Zhukovsky is 22 miles to the southeast of the Russian capital.

The airfields were closed from approximately 2:30 AM to 6:30 AM local time on August 21. The airstrikes themselves began not long after midnight, Moscow time.

In a comment posted on the social media platform Telegram soon after this latest drone barrage was over, Moscow Mayor Sobyanin acknowledged the airstrike attempts while also praising the Russian military’s ability to block them.

“This is one of the largest attempts to attack Moscow using drones ever," Sobyanin said. "The layered defense of Moscow that was created made it possible to successfully repel all the attacks from the enemy UAVs."

Even though they did not hit their intended targets, the drone strikes were daring in several ways.

For one, they took place while Chinese Premier Li Qiang was staying in Moscow for meetings with Russian Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin this week.

For the second, they were another example of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s brazen use of military materiel supplied by the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States in cross-border assaults. Under current regulations Ukraine is supposed to be adhering to, Ukraine is not supposed to be targeting Russian airbases and other military targets on Russian soil using western resources to carry out those raids. The weapons supply agreements also explicitly stipulate that multiple types of short-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles may not be fired across Russia’s borders. This limitation applies, for example, to the United States’ Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and to the Red Shadow missiles provided by the United Kingdom. There are some exceptions for missiles Ukraine may choose to use to defend itself, but offensive strikes such as the ones which happened yesterday would be prohibited under these rules.

The pronounced reason for the restrictions is to avoid the weapons suppliers being dragged by Ukraine into a broader regional war beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Just two days earlier, on August 19, Zelensky made a formal plea to his allied weapons partners and military strategists to remove all restrictions on the use of all military equipment, missiles, and munitions, so it can pursue its march into Russian territory more effectively. As of this moment there has been little response to Zelensky’s demands, with France, the United Kingdom, and the United States all refusing to budge of their positions.

Later this week Zelensky admitted he has been using some American military weapons to attack targets inside Russia, in direct violation of the terms under which he accepted them. This was confirmed when videos emerged yesterday of a Ukraine missile barrage fired on a pontoon crossing at Glushkovo, Russia. They were sufficiently high resolution and close up enough to confirm that U.S.-provided M-142 High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) had been used to damage the pontoon bridge.

As all this is happening, Ukraine’s forces continue to pursue their invasion into western Russia, while Russian reestablishes securing further territory in eastern Ukraine.