Russia accused this Monday Ukraine of a attack on moscow with two drones and another that destroyed an ammunition depot in the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, a day after renewed Russian shelling of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the two drones crashed into non-residential buildings and there were no casualties in the overnight attack, the first blamed on Ukraine in the Moscow region in nearly three weeks.
The Russian Defense Ministry called the bombing a “terrorist act” by Ukraine.
Ukraine did not publicly confirm its responsibility, but an unnamed source in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry told the AFP news agency that the attack on Moscow was “a special operation of the GUR”, Ukraine’s military intelligence services.
In Moscow, media reported that one of the drones fell on a highway in the Russian capital, Komsomolsky Prospekt, near the Ministry of Defence. The windows of nearby businesses were blown out and a house located 200 meters from the Ministry suffered roof damage, they added.
The attack came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened retaliation for recent Russian bombing raids on the southern Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odessa, including one that on Sunday killed two and wrecked a cathedral.
In the same span, Russia denounced several attacks by Ukrainian drones in Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula, also on the Black Sea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, including one that destroyed an ammunition depot over the weekend.
Hostilities in the Black Sea have escalated since Russia decided last week to withdraw from a UN-brokered deal with Ukraine that had allowed war-blockaded Ukrainian grain exports from southern Ukrainian ports.