Moscow said Wednesday it had downed three Ukrainian drones and accused Kyiv of perpetrating a “terror" attack, after officials said the vehicles had targeted a military base near Russia’s capital.
“An attempt today by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by three aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles on facilities in the Moscow region was thwarted," the defence ministry said in a statement.
The ministry added that each of the drones was downed by electronic warfare defensive systems and that no one was injured in the attack.
Earlier the governor of the Moscow region Andrei Vorobyov said two drones had crashed around “on approach to storage units of a military base" some 50 kilometres (31 miles) southwest of Moscow.
The attack came as Ukraine is waging a counter-offensive to recapture land seized by Russian troops.
Kyiv said on Wednesday that its air defence systems had shot down six Iranian-designed attack drones launched by Russia forces over the western Khmelnytskyi region.
Those attacks came one day after Ukrainian officials said Russia had deployed a “massive" barrage of nearly three dozen assault UAVs that targeted key infrastructure in western Ukraine.
Attacks, mostly by drones, on Russian territory bordering Ukraine have increased over the past weeks.
Moscow and its environs, lying some 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, have up to now been rarely targeted.
In early May, two drones were shot above the Kremlin and late the same month drones hit Moscow high-rises.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - AFP)